Backup blocked by scheduler disfunction

Hi, I have a C Drive image made on an external hard drive. I made several, but when I tried it again today I got this message: The backup operation requires the scheduler to be started. I have indeed disabled the scheduler because I want to be able to decide when I run my backups. But ok, I figured if I clicked on the prompt Enable Scheduler Device that it would then work again. Nope. It just goes around in circles. When I click on Enable, it say ok all good now, but then when I try the backup it takes me right back to the initial error message. I have made sure that Acronis scheduler is enabled via msconfig. Any ideas what is causing this glitch?

Thanks a lot