Resolved Problem creating daily auto system restore points

Hi Arie or anyone,

15 months ago you suggested a way to haave Win 7 create automatic daily system restore points.

http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-7/94815-system-restore-not-creating-scheduled-restore-points.html

It worked great on my office desktop, but I can't get it to work on my ne HP Pavillion Win 7 laptop.

This is the error message I receive:

"User account restriction error. The possible reasons are that blank passwords are not allowed or that a policy restriction has been enforced. "

Any idea how to solve this problem?

Thanks,


David

 

I don't have a passworde set on my office Win 7 machine, but maybe the automatic daily restore point code works on that because the local vendor who configured and sold me the machine has his own user account should he ever need to repair the RAID or whatever.

So I'll try this on my laptop tonight. Thanks.

One question: is the SR.vbs code described on that Windows Forum the same as the one you gave us here a year ago, Arie?

 

I set a password and successfully created the task, but it doesn't seem to be working.

I see in the history portion of task scheduler a lot of task "starts" and "triggered" and one failure -- but these seem to be happening at random hours, not at the time set for the task.

I'll recopy the code into a new SR.vbs and recreaate the task and see if that helps.

 

Home Premium.

 

Okay, I created a new auto system restore task and deleted the old (although the old history still appears to be there).

A couple of questions:

First, I need to create a Windows text file, not an MS-DOS text file, right?

And second, the default configuration is for Windows Vista, but I changed it to Windows 7, mis that correct?

I'll check and see if it works this evening.

 

I "ran" the task after I created it but it just kept "running" for hours until I stopped it.

The historyn says the task wasv terminated, which of course is true.

I'll see if it runs automatically tonight but I am not hopeful.

A possibly related problem: I tried to run Microsoft's IE 9 blocker toolkit from a command prompt and got an "access is denied" error message.

Do you know what that means?

Thanks.

 

How do you get to an elevated command prompt?

Ooops ... never mind, I just googled it. Thanks!

 

Okay, thanks to you I just successfully ran IE 9 Blocker, so that issue is resolved.

ButI'm still not getting automatic daily restore points. I did, however, get one called "HPSF restore point," which may be blocking daily restore points according to the last two posts in this thread:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Deskto...tion-Backup-Restore-Points/td-p/610581/page/3

I looked in msconfig as that thread suggests but couldn't find one relating to HP Support Assistant. I did uncheck startup tasks for HP Launch Box, HP On Screen Display, and something called HpwuSchd that deals with HP software updates.

No help in creating restore points. The task does start, but it keeps its "running" status without actually creating a restore point.

I did not, however, uncheck startup tasks for HP Quick Launch and HP Quick Web because I don't know what these do. Nor did I uncheck HP Cool Sense which monitors system temperature.

Should I uncheck those as well, or call HP (ugh) for advice?

Or is my problem unrelated to HP Support Assistant?

New info: further along in that thread someone mentions that system restore will not create a new restore ppoint ewithin 24 hours of another one having been created.

So I'll wait till tomorrow to see if it's not working, and if not,e other HP startup tasks in hopes that they are what's continuing to block auto daily system restore.

 

Sorry I haven't updated the statyus of my problem -- first I was traveling and then had relatives visiting, so I haven't had time to call HP and find out which of their support software is blocking the creation of auto daily restore points.

I will try to do that this week and report the results.

If you need me to close out this thread before that, just let me know.

Thanks.

 

Problem still not fixed. After speaking to HP support yesterday, they advised me to uninstall their HP support Assistant, which I did. They said they "believed" it alone was the culprit.

Today the task started at 12:45 Pm as scheduled, but 4 hours later it is still "running" but not completing. The history tab of Task Scheduler reports the following:

Event 107, task triggered on schedule
Event 319, task engine received message
Event 100, task started
Event 200, action started
Event 120, created task process

All the above took place at 12:45:47pm today. And nothing has happened since, more than 4 hours later.

Is there something wrong with the script itself?

Or is another one of the HP support programs -- HP Application Assistant, HP 3D CoolSense, HP Power Manager, HP Quick Launch, HP Quick Web, HP Security Assistant, HP Setup, HP Launch Box, HP Setup Manager, HP Update, or HP Software Framework still blocking the daily restore point task?

Please note that some but not all of the above programs also launch on startup according to the startup tab of msconfig.

There is also a task list program called "hpwuSchd Application," but I don't know what that does.

Sorry this is dragging on so long, but with two kids under the age of 11 and a wife who doesn't know a lot about safe computing, daily restore points have saved my butt on a number of occasions.

I'd like to make this work, with your help.

 

I'll call HP back and see if they can identify other likely culprits -- or at least reassure me that I don't need any of their support programs.

 

Arie, does the auto system restore task we create have anythinmg to do with the pre-installed SR task in the Microsoft section of Task Scheduler library?

That pre-existing SR task says it creates system restore points at 12 am daily and upon startup, and the history tab says it completed successfully today.

But there's no evidence of it having actually done that in system protection's list of restore points.

Do you know what this is?

 

I may finally be making some progress. At least I'm getting some info as to why it's not working.

Each day the task starts normally but then it terminates with this message:

Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational
Source: Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler
Date: 6/9/2012 9:45:00 PM
Event ID: 329
Task Category: Task stopping due to timeout reached
Level: Information
Keywords:
User: Dkline-Laptop\David Kline
Computer: Dkline-Laptop
Description:
Task Scheduler terminated "{360dc9a3-013f-4ad9-9b37-eddcb22bf01d}" instance of the "\Auto System Restore" task due to exceeding the time allocated for execution, as configured in the task definition. User Action: Increase the configured task timeout or investigate external reasons for the delay.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns= "http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event ">
<System>
<Provider Name= "Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler" Guid= "{DE7B24EA-73C8-4A09-985D-5BDADCFA9017}" />
<EventID>329</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>4</Level>
<Task>329</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime= "2012-06-10T04:45:00.181492100Z" />
<EventRecordID>10123</EventRecordID>
<Correlation ActivityID= "{360DC9A3-013F-4AD9-9B37-EDDCB22BF01D}" />
<Execution ProcessID= "4736" ThreadID= "6136" />
<Channel>Microsoft-Windows-TaskScheduler/Operational</Channel>
<Computer>Dkline-Laptop</Computer>
<Security UserID= "S-1-5-21-91838177-547877814-1348667704-1000" />
</System>
<EventData Name= "StoppedOnTimeout ">
<Data Name= "TaskName ">\Auto System Restore</Data>
<Data Name= "TaskInstanceId ">{360DC9A3-013F-4AD9-9B37-EDDCB22BF01D}</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

Am I still dealing with one of HP's "support" programs blocking execution?

If so, I'll uninstall HP Update and any others that seem like they might interfere with task scheduler.