When I got Windows 7, I saw that Microsoft had provided a backup utility, so I decided to use it.
It seemed to be working fine. I have an external hard disk, so I put an image of my system on the external disk. I saw that I could schedule regular backups, so against my better judgment I decided to have a regular weekly backup. (The whole point of using an external hard disk for backup is not to have it connected to your system most of the time. That means remembering to connect it for the regular backup each week.)
For the first two weeks, I remembered to reconnect, and everything was OK. I could see that the image had been updated on the external disk. Then, of course, I forgot to connect it in time for the next backup. A little warning showed up the next day in the Win 7 “Action Center.” I figured OK, I’ll do the backup manually. So I started the backup (Action Center said “Backup in Progress”) and I went ro have a snack, Half an hour later it was still “Backup in Progress” and also an hour and two hours later. Since the backup is supposed to be incremental, it should only take a few minutes (the previous backups took that amount of time) and I began to suspect that something was wrong. I couldn’t get any information or details on backup progress, just the announcement “Backup in Progress.”
So I tried to close everything connected with backup (clicking on “X” didn’t do it, so I used Task Manager), which seemed to work, except that I got the announcement “Backup Canceled” or something like that permanently on screen. So I decided to shut down the PC, but Windows wouldn’t allow it, saying Windows Explorer was still running. I tried shutting it off again, and I got a screen which asked me, among other things, if I wanted to log off. I figured if that’s my choice, OK and I logged off. Then I got a screen which said “Logging Off” which stayed that way for at least a half hour, and I decided that Windows wasn’t serious about logging off, and I would have to let the physical world take over. I pushed the start button on my PC for a few seconds and it shut down.
After I had used my PC for more productive purposes for a few days, I decided to try backing up again. The above scenario repeated itself almost exactly.
Now I can’t try seeing what;s wrong with MS Backup without hanging up Windows. I want to point out that my external hard disk works fine – I can read and write to it quite well. It’s just that MS Backup can’t.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can fix this? Never had these problems when I used XP..
