Microsoft officially ceased support for its various Windows 2000 platforms back in July 2010. (See: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=Windows+2000&Filter=FilterNO.) It is our intention to cease all technical support for BackupAssist on all Windows 2000 platforms from June 30, 2012.

BackupAssist software solutions have supported Windows 2000 platforms since our very first release in 2002. However, all good things eventually come to an end. We can no longer justify leaving out new software features in order to maintain backwards compatibility with the old Windows 2000 platforms. Hence we are implementing a two phased End of Life approach to ceasing support of this old operating system platform.

Phase One: BackupAssist v6.4 will not support Windows 2000 platforms

We are planning to introduce new features into the upcoming BackupAssist v6.4 release, which will not be backwards compatible with Windows 2000 platforms. Thus the BackupAssist v6.3.x series of releases will become the last versions to work on Windows 2000 platforms.

Current Windows 2000 platform users wanting access to the advanced features in BackupAssist 6.4, and subsequent versions of BackupAssist, should upgrade their operating systems. Naturally, we’ll be here to help you with any issues migrating BackupAssist to a new server platform.

We will still respond to your technical support requests if you are running earlier BackupAssist versions which support the Windows 2000 platforms. However, we may be limited in our ability to resolve any new software issues on Windows 2000 platforms.

Phase Two: End of Life for BackupAssist on Windows 2000 platforms

From June 30, 2012 we will cease providing technical support for any version of BackupAssist running on any Windows 2000 platforms.

If you have any questions about the End of Life for BackupAssist on Windows 2000 platforms, please feel free to contact our technical support team via an e-mail to: support@backupassist.com.

Notes:

1. In the above, “Windows 2000 platforms” covers: Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, Windows 2000 Professional Edition, and Windows 2000 Server, plus any other Microsoft Windows 2000 based platforms we may have missed.
2. End of life (EOL) does not mean that versions prior to BackupAssist v6.4 will no longer function on Windows 2000 platforms. You may continue to run your earlier application. EOL indicates that Cortex I.T. Labs has chosen to focus on supporting widely used platforms and instead suggest an upgrade path.

G’day folks,

We would like to inform you that our Australian technical support office will be closed on Thursday, 26th January 2012 due to the Australia Day Public Holiday.

Technical support services from the Australian office will be unavailable on this day, by both phone and email. For urgent assistance you are welcome to contact our USA office.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused and wish you a happy Australia Day!

Kind regards,
The Team at BackupAssist

S3Rsync domain name expired

G’day folks,

It’s been brought to our attention that the online storage provider S3Rsync.com currently has an expired domain name. At this stage, we are unsure as to what the full impact of this may be to BackupAssist users who are running backups to S3Rsync.com. However, right now we do know that some BackupAssist users are impacted.

BackupAssist is not affiliated with S3Rsync in any way. We are unable to provide a resolution the issue. The problem is with the online storage provider S3Rsync.com – not your BackupAssist software. We highly recommend that you contact your online storage service provider to find out exactly what is happening, and the best way to move forward in this scenario.

Workarounds:
If your backups are being impacted by this in any way, you could configure a temporary backup job to run to an alternative online storage provider, if you’ve got access to one. Alternatively, you can start doing temporary backups to a local drive, which can then be taken offsite manually, while you wait for your S3Rsync.com service to become available again.

We’re sorry that we’re unable to provide any further information at this time. If you require any help configuring an alternative way to backup your data during this period, please contact support@backupassist.com.

Kind Regards,
The BackupAssist Team

We discovered in the early hours of this morning that our Incoming email provider has been having difficulty processing emails.This has created a small backlog of emails and a delay in our response times.

This issue has now been resolved, and any emails we have received will be responded to very shorty.
Our apologies for any inconovenience this may have caused.

On behalf of the team at BackupAssist and Cortex I.T. labs, we would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Holiday Season Closure Dates 2011–2012

Please note that our USA and Australian offices will be closed on the following dates over the Christmas / New Year period:

USA Office Closed:

• Monday, 26th December 2011 — Christmas Day Holiday
• Friday, 30th December 2011 — New Year’s Eve Holiday
• Monday, 2nd January 2012 — New Year’s Day Holiday

Australian Office Closed:

• Monday, 26th December 2011 — Boxing Day Holiday
• Tuesday, 27th December 2011 — Christmas Day Holiday
• Monday, 2nd January 2012 — New Year’s Day Holiday

Technical support services, customer enquiries and accounts in each office will be unavailable on the days listed above, including by both phone and e-mail.

If your local technical support office is closed and you need urgent, business critical assistance, you may like to contact us at the alternate office if it’s open. Our office contact details are available on our website here: http://www.backupassist.com/support.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

More to come in 2012

Wow, what a year 2011 has been! The BackupAssist products have been growing rapidly in popularity with our SMB clients, resellers and distributors. Plus our product management and development teams have been designing up a storm on a multitude of great new product innovations for companies big and small. If 2011 is anything to go by, 2012 is going to be another great year!

Merry Christmas

On behalf of the entire team at BackupAssist and Cortext I.T. Labs, we would like to wish you, your staff and your families a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We hope that 2012 brings you all the best in your business and look forward to working with you next year.

Best wishes,
The Team at BackupAssist

Due to some unplanned Maintenance on Friday December 16th we experienced a 90 minute outage of BackupAssist.com as well as with out CMC (Centralized Monitoring Console) and the BackupAssist forums.

During this time, any CMC Reports which were schedule to run and/or issue Report emails will have been effected so you may experience a gap in your reporting.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause, but hope that the maintenance which was performed will help improve the performance of our websites and portals in the days to come.

Should you have any questions regarding this issue please contact support@backupassist.com

Hi everyone,

We’ve had a number of cases arise where an ESET anti-virus security product and BackupAssist being installed on the same machine has resulted in the system entering a ‘Blue Screen of Death’ (BSOD) towards the end of the backup.

We have a previous blog item which outlines early details of this important issue here.

We’re pleased to say that we are now satisfied, by testing results and user feedback, that we have a suitable resolution to the issue as well as an effective workaround available.

Environment and Symptoms

The common environment and symptoms (that we’ve been able to identify) are as follows:

• Running a 64-bit version of the Windows Server 2008 platform or later.
• Using the Windows Imaging engine within BackupAssist v6.
• An ESET Anti-virus/security product is installed (typically NOD32).
• The BSOD occurs during the ‘cataloging’ phase of the backup process. You can determine this by watching the backup run on the ‘Monitoring’ screen within BackupAssist.

Resolution

ESET have made a release publicly available which addresses this particular issue.
Specifically it’s NOD32 Version 4.3.10023.0. This can be downloaded from here.

Any questions should be directed to your ESET contact.

Workaround

The reason for the BSOD occurring is that BackupAssist mounts the .vhd file generated by the Windows Imaging engine to be able to catalogue the backup properly. It’s during this mounting process when the conflict occurs.

The development team have added an option in BackupAssist v6.2.7 which will allow for a ‘quick catalogue’ to be generated without mounting the .vhd file (removing the chance of the BSOD to occur). The downside of using this option is that you can’t perform a file search within the image backup; however you can still restore individual files and applications through the BackupAssist Restore Console as expected.

Note: You can download BackupAssist v6.2.7 (or later) from here.

The steps to enable ‘quick cataloguing’ are as follows:

1. Click on ‘Jobs‘ at the top of the BackupAssist console and double click on the Windows Imaging job you have configured.
2. Click on ‘Imaging Options‘ down the left hand side.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the main window and tick ‘Quick catalogue‘ and apply your changes (see screen shot below):

If you are unsure if your system is affected by this issue, please submit some diagnostics to our support team and we can confirm this for you. The steps to submit diagnostics are:

1) Go to Contact Support (from the bottom-left corner of the console) -> Contact Support
2) Fill out the form and ensure that the Submit system diagnostics check box at the bottom is checked.

Any further questions or comments can be submitted to support@backupassist.com.

Thanks,
The BackupAssist Support Team

Hi everyone,

As you may be aware, BackupAssist v6.2.7 was recently made available to the public.

This is a highly recommended release that we’re advising all users of the Zip and File Replication engines to install.

The issue which we’ve resolved is related to backing up network shares using the engines listed above. The network shares may not have been entirely backed up; however the backup report states that the entire backup was successful.

You can determine if you’re subject to this issue by attempting to perform a restore of your data (from a successful backup). If you find that not all files are available to be restored, you need the v6.2.7 fix.

The reason for the backup not completing the entire selection is due to trying to exceed maximum number of network handles being used. When this happens the connection is automatically disconnected.

A possible side effect to the v6.2.7 update is more data being backed up which means you may find that your backups take longer to run and the overall size increases substantially (see example data below).

* Skipped files were due to files being in use on the network share at the time of backup.

As mentioned earlier this issue affects all BackupAssist users backing up network shares using the Zip or File Replication engines.

You can upgrade to BackupAssist v6.2.7 by downloading the installer from http://www.backupassist.com/BackupAssist/download.php.

It’s a free update for all users running BackupAssist version 6 and can be installed directly over the top of your current installation. A reboot is required.

If you have any questions or concerns about anything mentioned above, please e-mail us at support@backupassist.com for further assistance.

Thanks,
The BackupAssist Team

Dear Valued Customers,

We would like to inform you that our US technical support office will be closed on Thursday 24th November 2011 due to the Thanksgiving public holiday. Technical support services from the US office will be unavailable on this day, including both phone and email.

Friday 25th November is also a US public holiday, however our support team will be available throughout the day if required.

For urgent assistance you are welcome to contact our Australian office.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards,
The Team at BackupAssist

Dear Valued Customers,

We would like to inform you that our Australian technical support office will be unavailable from 2:30pm on Friday the 18th November, 2011.
Technical support services from the Australian office will be unavailable on this day, including both phone and email. For urgent assistance you are welcome to contact our US office.

Normal support hours will resume as normal Monday 21st November.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards,
The Team at BackupAssist