Half the time I get the Dashboard

[kidziti]

There seems absolutely no rhyme or reason, but there are two icons I can activate to open Retrospect - one opens the program, the other opens this incredibly clunky and slow dashboard that takes several minutes to open if it ever does. The problem is that when I click the basic program icon, half the time the dashboard tries to open (and often fails.) I don't want the dashboard but it's always a roll of the dice that I'll get it anyways. Is this a know problem? Does anyone have a solution?

[DavidHertzberg]

kidziti,

This Knowledge Base article used to have an explanation of what to do to get around Dashboard problems.  It was updated 16 May 2019, which may indicate an Engine update which got messed up in Retrospect Windows 16.5.  File a Support Case. Disclaimer: I'm a Retrospect Mac administrator.

One suggestion would be to do what NoelC does, as quoted in this September 2019 post followed by my links to instructions on how to use Windows Task Scheduler, and bypass the Retrospect Windows Scheduler entirely.

Another suggestion—not exclusive with the one in the preceding paragraph—would be to pay US$49 for the Management Console Add-On, for which you'll have to contact Retrospect Sales directly (it's not yet in the Configurator) and use Granular Remote Management so you can kiss the Dashboard goodbye.  I think there's already a way to open a particular Retrospect Engine from the Remote Console (I don't have major-league-pitcher-quality vision, so I can't read the screen images in the KB article); Werner Walter of Sales has used it; phone (888) 376-1078‬ X814.

[kidziti]

Thanks, David. It looks like the last option is probably the way to go, but I put in a support ticket just to be sure I'm not screwing something up that I am unaware of.

[mbennett]

I can't explain why the Dashboard hangs when loading, but it has done that to me on occasion.  If the Retrospect service is running, when you try to launch the program itself the Dashboard will launch instead.  If no jobs are currently executing, you can click the power button in the top right corner and launch the program.  If you do that, close the dashboard as soon as the program starts.

If you try to start the program with a job executing it will kill the job or jobs.  The same thing happens if you use services.msc and stop the Retrospect services, the jobs die immediately.  This is sometimes not a bad thing, but you should know it's coming.

A lot of people aren't happy with the Dashboard, but it does give you a way to monitor when jobs are executing, completed, failed, etc. without stopping the program from functioning.  You can also simply launch the program once and minimize it.  The big issue they're working around is how Windows services work.

[kidziti]

I had an opportunity to speak with tech support and it was suggested that the best way around dashboard is to always have Retrospect running. At least that is the solution directly from Retrospect via their technical support. It seems a poorly implemented feature but it defaults when Retrospect is running a backup. I know I need to at least double the 8 Gb Ram on my Xeon-based OptiPlex, but he did not think it was a resource bottleneck on my end - which to me sounded like an acknowledgment that Retrospect knows dashboard is a resource problem. I told him the only way I know if Retrospect is running is to open Task Manager and see the process running, and that it would be nice to at least have a tray icon. As a techie-oriented software, I imagine Retrospect appeals to people like me who like to get their digital fingers dirty. So how could a user in the Retrospect fan club ever appreciate not having at least a tray icon gauge to keep digital tabs on the process? He said he would relay my thoughts to R&D.

[DavidHertzberg]

kidziti,

Dashboard is a poorly-implemented feature of Retrospect Windows.  It was implemented in Retrospect Windows 8 because a Retrospect-Mac-like Console proved to be impossible (third paragraph of mbennett's post), but had glaring bugs that weren't supposedly fixed until 4 years later in Retrospect Windows 12.5.  See this 2017 Forums post by me, which quotes the applicable 12.5.0.177 Release Notes but also quotes a reply from Retrospect Tech Support.  Also read the remainder of that thread.

I suggest installing the _one-way_ Web-based Management Console, which is included for free in Retrospect Windows 16.5, as a substitute for the Dashboard if you're going to have Retrospect always running .  I also renew my suggestion of paying US$49 for the Add-On that enables the _two-way_ Web-based Management Console, especially if Sales tells you it has the capability of starting and stopping the Retrospect Engine on a particular "backup server".  Here's a Product Suggestions—Windows post with some more information and links.

I have 7GB RAM (7 giga-bytes, not giga-bits; small 'b' = bits not a RAM measure) installed in my Retrospect Mac "backup server" machine.  That's sufficient to run the GUI-less Engine, which is ordinarily always running when the machine is booted, and also the non-Web-based GUI Console—which can be stopped and re-started separately. You may need more RAM than that, both because Windows 10 is Windows 10 (sneer, sneer 😀) and because the Web-based Management Console may use more RAM than the non-Web-based Retrospect Mac Console.  But extra RAM is comparatively cheap these days.

P.S.: In the meantime, try this suggestion from mbennett.

Edited November 13, 2019 by DavidHertzberg
Add sentence to 2nd paragraph with link to Product Suggestions—Windows post; P.S. linking to mbennett's interim suggestion