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Acronis Backups sometimes failing due to system restart

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Occasionally my Acronis Backups are 'Terminated by system shutdown' (per Acronis email). 

Windows Event Viewer shows the following information for an event that occurred at that time:

'The process C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe (<computer-name>) has initiated the restart of computer <computer-name> on behalf of user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for the following reason: Operating System: Service pack (Planned)
 Reason Code: 0x80020010

 Shut-down Type: restart
 Comment: '

From the above information, it would appear that it may be Windows Update that is causing this.

Is there any way to prevent this from happening?

 

 

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Rodolfo, assuming that you are using Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, or True Image, then there are options for each backup task on the Schedule panel to prevent the computer from being put to sleep or hibernation, and further options on the Advanced panel controlling Computer Shutdown, i.e. whether to allow it before a task is complete or not?

 assuming that you are using Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, or True Image, then there are options for each backup task on the Schedule panel to prevent the computer from being put to sleep or hibernation, and further options on the Advanced panel controlling Computer Shutdown, i.e. whether to allow it before a task is complete or not?

Steve, There is also an option in Windows to turn off the "Restart this Device As Soon as Possible" option after a system update. Would that also work?

 image 671

One option in Windows Update is to "Change active hours" to limit the times in which an automatic restart will occur.

If you have Windows Pro or another version which contains the Local Computer Policy, you can prevent automatic restarts from happening by navigating to Local Computer Policy\Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update and enabling "No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations"

Steve, I am using Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (build #39900).

Under the Schedule tab, I had already enabled 'Prevent the computer from going to sleep/hibernate'.

Under the Advanced tab, I do not see any setting to prevent shutdowns during the backup task.  The only settings I see there are:

- Stop all current operations when I shut down the computer

- Shut down the computer after the backup is complete

pl1, I had already turned off the Windows Update Advanced Option, 'Restart this device as soon as possible when a restart is required to install an update...'

BrunoC, I had set my Windows Update 'Active hours' to 7am to 1am (18 hours), which is the maximum allowed.  My backup starts at 6pm, and once per week the full backup runs.  According to the Activities data, this full backup has taken between 4 and 12 hours to complete, so it can be still running after 1pm (end of Update 'Active Hours').

I do have Windows Pro, so I will investigate the Local Computer Policy that you have suggested.

 

Brunoc,  I just read the description for the policy, which is:

'Specifies that to complete a scheduled installation, Automatic Updates will wait for the computer to be restarted by any user who is logged on, instead of causing the computer to restart automatically.

If the status is set to Enabled, Automatic Updates will not restart a computer automatically during a scheduled installation if a user is logged in to the computer. Instead, Automatic Updates will notify the user to restart the computer.

Be aware that the computer needs to be restarted for the updates to take effect.

If the status is set to Disabled or Not Configured, Automatic Updates will notify the user that the computer will automatically restart in 5 minutes to complete the installation.

Note: This policy applies only when Automatic Updates is configured to perform scheduled installations of updates. If the "Configure Automatic Updates" policy is disabled, this policy has no effect.'

It sounds like this policy may only apply if a user is logged in, whereas my scheduled backup runs when no user is logged in.  Do you think that the policy would still apply in my scenario?

Rodolfo Valerio wrote:

Steve, I am using Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (build #39900).

Under the Schedule tab, I had already enabled 'Prevent the computer from going to sleep/hibernate'.

Under the Advanced tab, I do not see any setting to prevent shutdowns during the backup task.  The only settings I see there are:

- Stop all current operations when I shut down the computer

- Shut down the computer after the backup is complete

Rodolfo, you should select (tick) the lower option (Shut down the computer after the backup is complete) if you don't want the system to shutdown while a backup is running.

Steve, it would appear that I may have misunderstood the option, 'Shut down the computer after the backup is complete'.  I interpreted its purpose to be simply shutting down the PC after the backup, and did not think that it could be used to postpone any automatic shutdown/restart (e.g., from Windows Update) until after the backup is complete.  The one consequence of using this option that concerns me is that my PC would always be shutdown after that backup, which would have an undesirable consequence, in that other jobs which are needed to run after that backup would not run until I manually restarted my PC.  

Rodolfo Valerio wrote:

Brunoc,  I just read the description for the policy, which is:

'Specifies that to complete a scheduled installation, Automatic Updates will wait for the computer to be restarted by any user who is logged on, instead of causing the computer to restart automatically.

If the status is set to Enabled, Automatic Updates will not restart a computer automatically during a scheduled installation if a user is logged in to the computer. Instead, Automatic Updates will notify the user to restart the computer.

Be aware that the computer needs to be restarted for the updates to take effect.

If the status is set to Disabled or Not Configured, Automatic Updates will notify the user that the computer will automatically restart in 5 minutes to complete the installation.

Note: This policy applies only when Automatic Updates is configured to perform scheduled installations of updates. If the "Configure Automatic Updates" policy is disabled, this policy has no effect.'

It sounds like this policy may only apply if a user is logged in, whereas my scheduled backup runs when no user is logged in.  Do you think that the policy would still apply in my scenario?

Rodolfo, I am not sure of the answer to your question. I am the only user of my system and I never explicitly log out. I believe that if you enable this setting, you could probably change your active hours to be from say 6:00 pm until 12:00 noon and then the combination of those settings would be sufficient.

 

Rodolfo Valerio wrote:

Steve, it would appear that I may have misunderstood the option, 'Shut down the computer after the backup is complete'.  I interpreted its purpose to be simply shutting down the PC after the backup, and did not think that it could be used to postpone any automatic shutdown/restart (e.g., from Windows Update) until after the backup is complete.  The one consequence of using this option that concerns me is that my PC would always be shutdown after that backup, which would have an undesirable consequence, in that other jobs which are needed to run after that backup would not run until I manually restarted my PC.  

Rodolfo, you haven't misunderstood the option!  It will shut down the computer after the backup is complete so is a two-edged sword if your backup is delayed or runs over etc and you are wanting to continue using the PC!

Personally, I try to schedule my backups to occur at times when I am not likely to be using the computer, and I haven't had any issues with it clashing with Windows Updates wanting to force a system restart.  That may well be more luck than judgement on my part as I tend to check for any Windows Updates fairly regularly and then get them done under my own control rather than letting MS decide when to reboot etc.

Thank you, everyone, for all of your suggestions and comments, which have helped me further assess my options for preventing/mitigating the problem.

Based on what I have heard from you, I will try the last suggestion from BrunoC, which is to use a combination of the Windows Policy setting '"No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations" and change the Windows Update Active Hours to become 6 pm to 12 noon.  This setting should prevent Windows Update from running during the scheduled backup time window (6 pm to 6 am) and also the time during which I use my PC most (i.e., 6 am to 12 noon).  In addition, the Windows policy setting should prevent Windows Update from restarting the PC while I am logged in.