Retrospect vs. UAC under Vista

[awnews]

I've been forced, kicking & screaming, to "upgrade" from XP to a Vista-32bit system (Win7 not allowed).

 

Once there, I'm required to leave Windows Vista UAC in place (enforced by group policy and reboot scripts that reenable it if disabled via local group policy, control panel settings, registry settings, etc. on any reboot). The problem is that, with UAC enables, Retrospect stops at the UAC warning dialog on any launch and waits for an "OK" response from the user. This makes unattended backups impossible.

 

+ Retrospect version 7.6.123

Launched at 9/10/2009 3:30 PM

+ Driver Update and Hot Fix, version 7.6.3.102

 

Running Vista 32-bit SP1.

 

I'm tried setting retrospect.exe to run as administrator, but that's not really the issue when using UAC. I've also set it to launch with my domain login, but no diff (and that's not the UAC issue either). Other programs are able to launch without throwing up this UAC warning dialog (a matter of a certificate, digital signature, etc.).

 

What needs to be done to allow Retro Pro 7.6+ to successfully launch and run unattended with UAC enabled under Vista?

 

[Mayoff]

Retrospect 7.6 should not be displaying a UAC dialog during autolaunch. That seems really strange.

 

Are you able to leave Retrospect running and minimized?

[awnews]

To be 100% accurate, I don't know what it's doing on autolaunch (at 1AM). I have it configured with my correct domain/name/password. But there are no log messages indicating that Retro even tried to launch.

 

However, when I try to launch it manually from the Start menu, I get the UAC dialog. After I confirm, Retro tries to run the missed backup jobs.

 

UAC

A program needs your permission to continue

If you started this program, continue

Retrospect

EMC Corporation

 

 

So I'm assuming from the lack of backups or log messages of any kind at the scheduled time that Retro if failing to launch, most likely due to UAC.

 

If we just focus on the *manual* launch attempt for a moment, why is UAC firing when Retro is started? Does 7.6+ lack the correct cert/digi signature? Many other apps are able to launch without throwing up the UAC dialog.

 

 

 

[Mayoff]

Schedule a backup for the afternoon and see if you can tell what it is doing.

[awnews]

I will do that. Can you please answer my question regarding why UAC is firing when Retrospect is launched *manually* from the start menu? I get this whether I launch Retro "normally" to tick the "run as admin" option.

[awnews]

I also just tried your "launch during the day" experiment. I hadn't tried it before because I expected the below *and* because of the fact that Retro is causing the UAC to fire even when manually launched.

 

So I set Retro to launch a few minutes from "now" and then quit out. It never launched (no launch, no popup from UAC, no events in the Retro log, no events in any of the Windows Event viewer log).

 

I then launched it manually and set up another one-time start of my backup script. But this time I left Retro running on the desktop. At the scheduled time if ran the backup OK.

 

As I've noted, I have the Security Prefs => User, Password, Log on to [domain] set up with my correct info.

[Mayoff]

Under Vista when Retrospect autolaunches you may not be able to see the UI at all.

 

You run into trouble under Vista because Retrospect needs to run with an administrator level right. Vista does not like programs running under an account that is different from the logged in user.

[awnews]

But if it was autolaunching at all (even without a GUI), it should write some basic info into the log. That's not happening.

 

If I change from the specific user (name, pw, domain) to "log in as logged in user") I still get the same UAC dialog when I try to manually launch Retro. And I don't think Retro will be able to run when my PC is locked (even if I leave myself logged in) unless I let it run with the specified credential--they're still mine, my admin-level account(same as logged-in-use when I'm sitting in front of the PC).

 

 

And back to UAC dialog popping up when trying to launch Retro manually--means that Retro doesn't have valid cert/digi sig to make Vista happy? Solve that and we can worry about autolaunching...

[awnews]

So I was (for now??) able to get manual launching without the UAC popup [work-around == begging & pleading with IT to change group policy, for my PC only, to turn off warnings but not UAC {"quiet mode"}].

 

However, Retro is still not able to auto-launch and run any scheduled backups. I've quit and reenabled the launcher from inside Retro [quitting and restarting Retro each time), changed the run-as option for the Retrospect launcher service [Local system vs. my account--the "old way" that used to be needed], changed Retrospect to run as admin, stopped/restarted/started the Retro Launcher service etc. No go.

 

The retrorun service *is* running. But Retrospect never launches and there are no log messages. The scheduled job immediately starts running if I later start Retrospect manually.

[awnews]

So I'm pretty well stuck--Retro refuses to auto-launch on my (work) Vista PC. I don't believe this is a generic Vista issue problem as Retro auto-runs on my home Vista PC. So it seems more likely that it's something to do with the locked-down nature (e.g. UAC) of my work PC. There's no evidence in any of the System Event Viewer logs that the Retro Launcher service is even trying to launch anything.

 

I've gotten around the UAC annoyance by periodically running TweakUAC to put the system in UAC "quiet" mode. This doesn't disable UAC (can't on my system as Group Policy forces it back on) but does suppress the annoying popups for a while (until GP policy turns them back, and then I use TweakUAC to turn them back off).

 

My "work-around" (if you can call it that) is to manually launch Retro a few times a week. As soon as it's launched the missed scheduled backups run.

[awnews]

After more begging & pleading, I was able to get IT to turn UAC completely off on my Vista SP1 PC (we'll see if that "sticks" after the next group policy update). After I did that and rebooted, Retrospect automatically launched and ran my scheduled backup. It wasn't able to do this with UAC on but just in "quiet mode."

 

On my home Vista PC, with UAC also off, Retro has also been able to auto-launch and run.

 

I'm also using another backup program (since Retro hasn't been working for me). It's been able to auto-launch and run regardless of UAC.

 

So based on what I've been seeing, Retrospect (the retrorun launcher service?) seems to have an issue with UAC, independently of what user account permissions are set inside of Retrospect. Any known info on this?

[mtscher]

I am also having this problem. I am running Vista Business 32-bit. Scheduled jobs do not start. I cannot find any errors in the Windows event logs or anything that Retrospect itself is logging.

 

It seems like a fair number of people are experiencing this issue. Has there been any "official" responses yet? Any thoughts on perhaps how to increase any logging levels to see at least what is failing and why?

 

Interestingly enough, in my case, everything had been working fine for at least a year. I havene't been able to pinpoint the exact day the scheduled jobs stopped working. I wish I could so that I could perhaps correlate it to some kind of update(Windows, Retrospect, etc).

[cfieldgate]

GoAWest,

 

Watch this thread go quiet now. Whenever anyone claims that Retrospect does NOT actually launch scheduled backups under Vista no one wants to sort it out.

 

I believe that it is likely that a Windows update - perhaps in SP1 or SP2 - has killed Retrospect's ability to auto launch. But I have not been able to get anyone to acknowledge that the problem actually exists, other than users of course, many of whom have raised this issue.

 

I hope you have more luck - I will be watching this thread :-)

[mtscher]

As a followup... I disabled UAC and Retrospect now starts and runs scheduled jobs. If I turn UAC back on it reverts to not running scheduled jobs.

 

A further annoyance (other than having to turn UAC off) is that when UAC is off, after a scheduled job runs, Retrospect seems to "hang". If I try to start the application interactively, it only brings up the monitor rather than the actual app. If I kill Retrospect.exe I can then run the interactive app.

 

What gets me is why so many of us have a 100% repeatable problem but yet EMC doesn't seem interested. I would be more than happy to troubleshoot them problem, provide logs (if anyone can find one that is actually written to), etc. This is not one of those crazy intermittent problems that are so hard for s/w companies to troubleshoot.

[arth1]

For what it's worth, this very problem (not autostarting under Vista with UAC enabled unless the application is already running) caused me buy multiple copies of another program instead of Retrospect a few months ago, despite Retrospect being by far the best backup program otherwise, even with its quirks. But being able to actually take automated backups is not a negotiable feature.

 

See http://forums.dantz.com/showtopic.php?fid/29/tid/30167/ for details on the problem reported back then.

 

I came back today, seeing whether the problem had been fixed, so I could give Retrospect another try. Apparently not. I think it's about time that they acknowledge the problem, though, seeing how many users experience it.