Member Avatar for Kurtismonger

My boss just bought a cheap-o Dell with Vista Home for our small office. We're running a workgroup with 2 other XP Pro machines. Had a huge amount of trouble with Vista Home but now have everything working except the backup to an external drive hanging off one of the XP Pro Machines. I created a new folder on that backup drive, shared it to the network, and mapped in on the Vista PC. I can manually create new folders on the shared drive (Z), but I can't get Cobian backup or the Vista Backup & Restore service to create folders. I have created the Vista's user on the XP machine and even tried creating the XP user account on the Vista machine and pulling the backup instead of pushing it. Nothing seems to work. Any idea's? or other backup solutions to try. Basically I just need to backup My Documents, the Outlook.pst and a Quickbooks company file from the Vista machine.

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Small, practical addendum based on the thread: the behavior you described (being able to create a folder interactively but the scheduled/automated backup cannot) is almost always an authentication/session mismatch rather than a mysterious Vista bug. and were right to point at permissions and the account used for the backup; also correctly flagged that edition/feature differences sometimes matter; ’s question about error text is useful because logs point to the cause.

Key technical points and checks to run (in order):

  • Mapped drives are per interactive session. A service or scheduled task typically does not see mapped letters created in Explorer, so backups that rely on a mapped Z: will fail unless the backup process runs under the same interactive credentials or you use UNC paths.
  • Test connectivity with the exact credentials the backup will use. From a command prompt run as that account:
    net use \\XPBox\BackupShare /user:XPBox\BackupUser YourPassword
mkdir \\XPBox\BackupShare\TestFolder

    If that fails, the problem is credential/permission, not Cobian or Vista itself.

  • Verify both share permissions and NTFS security on the XP machine allow Create/Write/Modify for the account the backup uses. Share-level Everyone=Full is not enough if NTFS denies write.
  • On the XP side disable Simple File Sharing (XP Pro) or make sure the local account model is set so credentials are validated (otherwise connections can fall back to Guest). On Vista check Network Discovery, File and Printer Sharing, and Password Protected Sharing settings.

Extra cautions:

  • Services: if Cobian is installed as a service, set the service Log On account to a local account that exists on the XP box (with a password) or run the task as a scheduled task using those credentials.
  • Open files: Outlook .pst and QuickBooks company files are typically locked. Use VSS-aware backups or the applications’ native backup tools to avoid corruption.
  • Use event logs and Cobian logs for the exact error code (Access Denied / ERROR 5 is common) to guide next steps.

If network backups keep blocking you, mounting the USB drive on the Vista machine or using a NAS with SMB and application-aware backups are reliable alternatives.

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Member Avatar for freshfitz

What doesnt work about it is there an error message

Member Avatar for Kurtismonger

As I stated in my post, the automated backups can't create the remote folder. No specific error code, other than "cannot create directory such-and-such on PC such-and-such".

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

Probably a permissions problem. When doing backups, what account is the backup program running under? It needs to run under an account that has admin permissions on your XP computer.

Member Avatar for blackpooldanny

Make sure the account has admin rights, then do a backup of the system. I tried to do it with guest rights and i had problems as you can tell :(

Member Avatar for samarudge

I don't think you can use network backup drives in anything other than business/ultimate. Might need an OS upgrade :(

Member Avatar for Kurtismonger

Probably a permissions problem. When doing backups, what account is the backup program running under? It needs to run under an account that has admin permissions on your XP computer.

The backup runs under the Vista user. I also setup the Vista user on the XP machine with admin rights. I even tried running the backup as the logged in user on the XP machine (with admin). Permissions doesn't explain why I can create a folder manually but not automatically under the backup.

Member Avatar for Kurtismonger

I finally figured it out. Vista requires authentication, which I knew, but also has an option under Networks & Sharing to not require password authentication, which to me means just a user name - no password required. Trying to keep things simple for my users that's what I chose. However, I had to have the XP user use a password and then set Cobian to run the backup as that user with the username, workgroup and password and it worked like a charm.

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