Who, What, When, Where and How?

 

What program are you using to backup? and where are you backing up to? 

 

Also, if you are backing up to the same hard drive (e.g. C or a partition on that hard drive) it's not really the way to go.  If the drive crashes or fails you backup is gone too.  You need to back up to an external hard drive or at a minimum to CD-R or DVD R media (not RW media).

If you're using Vista's automatic backup utility, you must not have file corruption errors or it will fail the operation (been there!).

 

You can see if you have these errors by going into the DOS prompt (Command window) and type (without the quotes) "fsutil dirty query c:"  If it comes back and says the drive is dirty, you must repair the corruption first.  (If it says "NOT dirty" this is not your problem).  You can repair the corruption in two ways:

 

1) At the DOS prompt type "chkdsk /r c:" which means check the disk c: and repair it.  I think you need Administrator permission so right click on the DOS/CMD window icon and select "run as administrator" (and hit continue if it asks for permission to continue) before typing this.

-or-

2) Left click on the Windows logo (bottom left), select computer.  Then RIGHT click on c:, select properties -> tools -> Error Checking check now.  It may ask for administrator authority (hit "continue" if you're the administrator or log in as the admin).  Select the first check box (automatically fix disk errors).  It will tell you it can't run while the other applications are running, do you want to start this check at the next restart?  Select "yes".  Then reboot your machine.  On restart it should run the disk check and repair before Windows comes up (it could take a long time - like an hour+).

Hi thanks for that would liek to give your suggestions a try but, god I know this sounds rather lacking of me, but how  do I get to teh dos prompt!!!

No sweat! 

 

Windows logo (flag in the lower left corner - left click) -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt (you want to RIGHT click the command prompt and select Run as Administrator ).

 

 

Hi, thanks for  that! I've now got to dos prompt but when I right click it gives the options of: mark, paste, select all, scroll or find. I am the administrator on the com puter and there are no other accounts so why doesn't the run as administrator option come up? 

 

 What appears is the following 

c:\Users\catherine>

 

Thanks for your patience!

Thanks for that.I've run the check and it's come back as not dirty...........any other suggestions?

 

 

You've opened the DOS prompt by left clicking it (and even as Administrator it won't open Administrator mode).  To open the Command Window as an administrator you have to open the DOS prompt by RIGHT clicking it.  In other words...

 

Left click All Programs

Left click Accessories

RIGHT click Command Prompt

Select Run as Administrator

Now the DOS window opens...

 

Make sense?  It's hard to communicate these fine differences on a forum!  ;o)

I'm running low on ideas. 

 

If you've got adequate space on the destination drive, the only other thing I can think of is that the index on the destination got corrupted.  You could rename the folders and see if backup starts functioning again.  i.e. if you're copying to G: and your computer name is HaleLaptop, there should be a folder on G: that says HaleLaptop.  Try renaming it HaleLaptopOld.  I think there's also a .bin file (mine has a file called MediaID.bin).  This might also need to be renamed to MediaIDOld.bin or something similar.  If that doesn't immediately help you can always rename them back.

 

Another idea is to try running fsutil dirty query on the destination drive.  You do it the same way but instead of c: you put in g: or whatever your destination drive is shown as when you pull it up on file explorer  (right click windows logo -> explore).  If the destination drive is corrupt it might (I don't know for sure) create the same problems.

 

Hopefully someone else has some ideas with Windows backup functions (or maybe hit the Microsoft sites?).