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When Your Upgraded Windows SP2 Backup Fails

Every so often users trying to back up a Windows XP system with a fresh Service Pack 2 upgrade are unable to complete the task. That's the bad news. The good news is, we have a fix!

I've installed Windows Service Pack 2 on my Windows XP machine and now my backups have gone funky. Some files aren't being backed up or the backup fails completely. What's wrong?

You've hit a problem with Windows BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Services), which is included in SP2 (as well as being available as a separate update 842773). Basically, BITS is messing with a Registry entry that tells your system which files not to back up. The problem has been reported with a number of backup programs.

The affected Registry key is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\
BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup

When BITS starts, it changes the value of this key to make sure that recovering from a failed backup will still let BITS resume a file transfer that was disrupted at the same time. Unfortunately, the value BITS writes to the Registry key is wrong, "not correctly formed", in Microsoft-speak.

The good news is there are a couple of fixes available. The easy one, and the recommended fix, is to download an update from Microsoft's Download Center and install it on your system.

www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&familyid=8dbcae14-2dac-4445-91ec-54c042ad6729&displaylang=en

For the truly masochistic among you, Microsoft also includes instruction on manually changing the Registry key. Of course all the usual dire warnings about fooling with the Registry apply.

If you want to make the Registry change, click Start\Run. Now type cmd to get to the command line. Then click OK.

Now type: Reg.exe ADD HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup /v BITS_metadata /t REG_MULTI_SZ /d "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Downloader\*" /f

Check your work. No, we mean it. Check your work! Now do it again! Now hit Enter and reboot.

For more information, see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=883357. It wouldn't hurt to check the Registry entry here against the one Microsoft gives in that article. If there's a difference, use Microsoft's version.