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Acronis Scheduler : strange task failing at system shutdown

Thread needs solution

Hi,

When my system (Windows 10 Pro Creators) is shutting down, the following event appears in the Event Viewer :

Event 1, Acronis scheduler
Scheduler failed to run task >> "" with GUID 'CC9E077D-1133-48D6-B4BE-B3E1EE1F6F0C' because of error 87> (Scheduler has received a request with an invalid parameter.).

A task with that ID doesn't appear in the Task Scheduler. The only task programmed on my system via ATI is a daily backup at 7:30 PM.

So what is Acronis trying to do ?

This didn't happen with ATI 2017.

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OK. This appears to be a problem with the following option :

Backup Options | Advanced | Computer Shutdown | Stop all current operations when I shut down the computer

I unchecked this option and shut down : problem gone. I re-checked it and shut down: problem is not back. So I guess it's an initialization problem. Decidedly, I have the feeling to use a beta version. See https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2018-forum/ati-2018-adventures.

Patrick, the advanced option is basically a kill command that cuts the legs off any active Acronis processes when you initiate a computer shutdown, so not surprised that it will give some entries in the Windows Event logs - most processes do not like being terminated abruptly!

I suspect that this option was brought in because of complaints about the message that ATI used to show on shutdown saying it would take up to 2 minutes to gracefully close all active Acronis processes.

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Patrick, the advanced option is basically a kill command that cuts the legs off any active Acronis processes when you initiate a computer shutdown, so not surprised that it will give some entries in the Windows Event logs

Sorry, but I do not agree. At the time of the shutdown, no backup task was launched, as mentioned above. If another internal ATI process was involved, it has been notified by the system that a shutdown was about to occur and could behave accordingly. And I doubt that these internal processes (services, I guess) need that much time to gracefully terminate. The fact that the problem disappeared after switching this option off and then on again after a reboot seems to confirm that the problem is of another nature. Also, I don't remember if this option was present in ATI 2017 but anyway, this issue appeared with ATI 2018.

If your statement is correct and if this behavior is "as-designed", then this is very bad programming practice. In no way a developer should deliberately accept that a process be terminated abruptly - and give the user the capability to generate this misbehavior, even more so - without any consideration about what it is currently doing. What if this process is currently writing data to the disk ? This is exactly the same as shutting down a computer by pulling off the plug.

An error is an error and correct code must avoid this. If the developer needs only one reason to take care of this, here is one : not generating events that cause users and administrators to lose their time trying to determine what's going wrong.

Patrick, I fully appreciate your comments and how you feel this should work - in reality we are both sharing opinions that have no base in the actual application design as Acronis has not published such information.  The only way to have a definitive statement would be to get into a dialogue with one of the developers, which in turn will require that you open a Support Case to raise the question.  It could turn out that what you are seeing is a bug in the code causing an incorrect parameter to be passed in these circumstances.

Patrick, this has been reported before...

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2018-forum/acronis-shaduler-error-when-shutting-down-computer

I discovered this in Beta testing and also have reported it through the app feedback in the release version. It persists. If you have the Acronis Scheduler Manager app, run the "get list" command before and after a scheduled task runs. You will see a new task has been set up which only runs on shutdown. But the task is left with no command, hence the reported error. If you delete that weird task before shutdown, the error will not occur. Seems totally innocuous.

I plan to look into that option you mentioned above.

 

Bruno, thanks for chiming in on this topic and reminding us about the previous topic in this area.

Regarding Patrick Philippot's comment "If the developer needs only one reason to take care of this, here is one : not generating events that cause users and administrators to lose their time trying to determine what's going wrong", ...

The general consensus of the gurus on the Window10 Forum (https://www.tenforums.com - a forum of Windows 10 users) is that the Windows Event Log is a good tool for gathering data for know problems but not a good tool for determining if a problem actually exists.  Windows logs a lot of events which could represent errors and the list of events logged increases with each Windows upgrade.

It would undoubtedly be cleaner for ATI to determine whether the task is still needed and to delete the task if it is not, but this kind of "error" causes no real problem.  And it might possibly be less expensive to let Windows handle the situation than to have ATI do proper cleanup.  (I doubt, it, but it's possible.)

Event records like the one in question might cause users some heartburn but I doubt many administrators would be too concerned. Such an administrator would have been driven to an early grave by the DistributedCOM eventid 10016 errors that Microsoft has allowed Windows to generate for years.

I would encourage users whom see these issues and have a subscription account  to log in to their Cloud Dashboard and have a look for any non-completed tasks or tasks where errors exist.  If you see such entries resolving those issues can fix such errors as is being discussed here.

To log in to your Dashboard click the Account tab in the GUI and look for your Account username (usually your email address).  Click on the  v  (down arrow) to the right of your account username and select Acronis Cloud.  Your default web browser should open and you should be automatically signed in to your dashboard.

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

It would undoubtedly be cleaner for ATI to determine whether the task is still needed and to delete the task if it is not, but this kind of "error" causes no real problem.

Yes, but you can't be sure of this in advance. When you get this kind of message after an upgrade that didn't run very well ( see https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2018-forum/ati-2018-adventures ), you really need to know what is going on and every related error message is important.

After all, we are talking about a very special kind of software : the software that is supposed to save your work when something goes wrong. Such a software has to be absolutely clean and reliable.