ntbackup selections changed

One of our servers suddenly stopped doing its backup properly. When I watch the (scheduled) backup routine running the selection that it backs up is not the selection that is listed in the .bks file. I’m not sure what it *is* backing up as the (full) log file doesn’t tell me the details and the gui interface is not available for me to poke around on when the job is scheduled. Turns out that the @ in front of the backup selection (as per Microsoft’s XP backup article) did the trick. Why I should need one in Windows2000, when it’s not documented anywhere else that I can see, I don’t know. I’m just glad the backups are all working again in time for the Christmas break. Our mail server was also refusing to backup, but this was because there was more data on the disk than would fit on the tape drives. Swine consultants keep backing up their hard disks using ghost or even just an xcopy onto the server and taking it over the tape drive capacity.
No flames telling me to use BackupExec or any other third party software please, unless you are going to give me a cheque to buy the third party software at the same time.

No more comments (for some)

Tapestry have had a cease and desist notice from ucomics saying that he must stop providing the rss feed for the comics on their site. A real shame, but I’m not suprised its happened to be honest. By using RSS you are bypassing adverts on the main page, although how this is any different from browsing with a banner/advert blocking browser/proxy I’m not sure. Thankfully my own feed still works as they have not prevented hotlinking.

What a week!

The home computer has now been basically scrapped. A new motherboard, which means new cpu, ram,heatsink and fan have now been ordered. On the plus side I should have a pc that will (on paper) be twice as fast. On the downside I have a dent in the wallet – not really want I wanted. I’ve also suffered really slow internet this weekend and this afternoon its been almost impossible to connect, with connections on adsl lasting a minute if I’ve been lucky. I replaced the netgear router with my original conexant one and i’m back to normal. I really hope that the router is not fried too (although that should be under warrenty)

More Crashing

The OS was wiped on the crashing pc after a ghost backup of all the drives (27gb worth!) and XP was installed on the freshly formatted disk. For about 5 minutes it looked like everything was working again, until we went to copy a file across the network and boom – a reboot. Aha! Network card we thought (again), and tried to copy the file again when the machine was back online……swine thing worked this time, and the next two times……..until we clicked on the start button – KABOOM! At this point I almost cried but it was time to leave my patient co-techie to have his lunch and go do the hoovering of our lounge carpet….to be continued 🙁