howto : debugging Windows Scheduler job

[GuitarBilly]

EDIT : since I now investigated and resolved my issue, I moved this to Show and Tell as reference for others.

W10 Enterprise 64-bit
npbackup 3.0.0-windows-gui-x64-public-3.13-c 2025022301

hello again!
it is time to enable an automated npbackup job on Windows. I have set the configuration, it runs fine manually from the GUI. Then I created the windows scheduler task.

However it does not run from the scheduler, and provides status 0x78 on each run.

(had the task disabled for a while, re-enabled today)

Googling 0x78 does not really lend a clue to what could be going on. My suspision is the fact that the scheduler task is listed to be run as user SYSTEM.

HOW TO DEBUG

To get better feedback, run the task from the commandline as user SYSTEM, and capture all feedback and error messages.

1. reference https://woshub.com/runas-localsystem-account-windows/ , follow instructions for your OS:
2. mine is W10 so I downloade PSExec.tool from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/psexec
3. launch a CMD window as adminstrator and execute psexec.exe -i -s cmd.exe.
4. Windows may drop a message that it thinks what we are doing is dangerous, choose "UNBLOCK". (message in the Notification Area)
5. now the new terminal for user SYSTEM is opened, check it with whoami:
   

REPLICATE THE TASK SCHEDULER TASK

1. find the npbackup task in Windows Scheduler and RMB, select Properties
2. go to the Actions tab
3. select the Start a program line, click Edit...
4. copy Start in (optional) and do a cd <starting_folder_path> in the SYSTEM terminal
5. copy the Program/script line and paste it in the SYSTEM terminal
6. copy the Add arguments (optional) line and paste it in the SYSTEM terminal after the previous command.
7. press ENTER, sit back, relax and watch npbackup execute.

investigate the terminal feedback and resolve your issue(s). mine was a missing rclone config for the SYSTEM user; it could not find the OneDrive target that I had specified.

[deajan]

Thank you for reporting back.
Running the backup task as system guarantees that files can be saved regardless of ACL problems, and also guarantees that VSS snapshots can be taken.
This is a default behavior and should not create any issues.
Still, you should be able to find the corresponding npbackup-cli.log file in the executable directory which should point to the right direction.

Anyway, glad your issue is resolved.