Reader and friend Jack Carmena has been having a problem with getting scheduled backups to run with Acronis True Image…
First, he wrote:
My Acronis back up has missed the last two scheduled backups and I can’t figure out why.
My first suggestion was that he delete the
scheduled task and set it up again. Sometimes, that’s enough to solve the problem — especially when the scheduled backups have been working in the past.
Unfortunately, he wrote back:
I did what you said and cancelled the existing save job and initiated another one for 11:40 p.m. last night.
It did not work.
At that point, I stopped by and took a look. We deleted the task, set it up again and scheduled it to run a couple minutes later. The backup ran just as expected.
Problem solved, we thought…
Then came the bad news:
My auto backup failed to execute or run a week after you left when it was scheduled.
When I clicked on the event, it said: “Last result: logon failure,user account restriction. Possible reasons are blank passwords are not allowed, logon hour restrictions,or a p…….(I can’t see the rest of it).”
Any suggestions other than trying again?
I wrote back to Jack to suggest that he check his UserName on Acronis True Image”s Sheduling tab. In my case Dragon is the computer name and tas is my userID. You can confirm your user name by clicking on the Windows XP start button — it’s shown at the top of the Start menu. I use a password, but don’t fill one in — Acronis recognizes that it’s running as the same user as the one that’s logged in, so it proceeds.
I also did a Google search and found that someone had solved the problem by uninstalling and reinstalling Acronis True Image, so I suggested that Jack try that.
Jack also downloaded an update to the Acronis Scheduler, which didn’t solve the problem.
His next step was a "live chat" with Acronis’ tech support and downloaded a new release of True Image Home 2009.
After installing it, he set up a new backup task to run an hour later — which it did. Again, the problem seemed to be solved.
But, the problems came back, and the scheduled backups didn’t work.
I hope I’ve come up with the solution. Remember, the scheduled backup works when he sets it up for a test shortly after creating the scheduled task. The ones failing are the later executions of those tasks.
I asked Jack if he had changed any of his power settings to get his computer to shutdown or go to sleep when it’s been inactive.
Acronis won’t wake up if the computer is asleep — or at least I don’t think it will. (Some computers are designed to run maintain the scheduler even through they’re asleep, and wake up to run scheduled tasks.)
You can check your Power settings via:
- right-click on a blank part of the desktop
- select Properties from the right-click “context” menu
- click the Screen Saver tab
- Click the Power… button at the bottom right. That section says “Monitor power” but don’t believe it
- the Power Options Properties dialog box should open to the Power Schemes tab.
- Check your settings on System standby and System hibernates – it either has the Plugged In setting set to anything other than “Never,” that can be the source of your problem.
The system may be asleep or hibernated when Acronis would have run the backup — but, since it’s hibernated or asleep, Acronis isn’t running (and neither is the Windows scheduler) so the backup doesn’t take place.
Unfortunately, Jack responded today that Both "SYSTEM STANDBY" and "SYSTEM HIBERNATES" were set on “NEVER."
and