Issue

ntbackup scheduled backup job begins and immediately fails.

Backup logs created in C:\Documents and Settings\<ntbackup-account>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data don’t list any errors. Backup .log files are created but they are blank 1kb files.

Application logs record following warning when backup begins:

Event ID: 1524
Source: Userenv
User: ntbackup-account (account used to run scheduled job)
Type: Warning
Description:
Windows cannot unload your classes registry file – it is still in use by other applications or services. The file will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.

 

System logs record following info messages when backup begins:

Event ID: 7035
Source: Service Control Manager
User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Type: Information
Description:
The Removable Storage service was successfully sent a start control.

Event ID: 7036
Source: Service Control Manager
User: N/A
Type: Information
Description:
The Removable Storage service entered the running state.

Cause and Resolution

Issue was caused by wrong backup selection .bks file encoding. This file was created manually and saved in ANSI instead of Unicode format. Re-saving file (with notepad.exe) choosing Unicode encoding resolved the issue.