Whenever I go to the "Control Panel | System and Security | Backup and Restore" window in Windows 7, the Backup section reads "Windows Backup has not been set up" and the Restore section says "Windows could not find a backup for this computer". Twice I've gone through the "Set up backup" process, but the messages remain. The "Select another backup" and "Recover system settings" links both take me to my existing backup sets on a USB-attached external drive. Its connection is never removed, and I've set a drive letter for it. Even immediately after taking a backup via "Set up backup", when I return to that control panel window it says it hasn't been set up. My guess is that some registry setting is stuck; is this a known problem?

Hi ronks,He have not seen this before. Can you let me know the following?1. Did your 'set up backup' go without any errors?2. Did backup run after you set it up?3. Did you close and reopen the Backup and restore control panel just to make sure?From what you have told me, looks like you have an earlier backup from Vista (I am guessing) and you haven't setup your backup successfully on Windows 7 yet. Please correct me if I am wrong. Also, can you check if the subkeys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsBackup are created in the registry?Thanks,Sneha[MSFT]

Hi Ronks, You issue can be occur if your OS can't remember your backup statue. You can try the following steps to fix your issue. 1. Navigate to the following entry. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsBackup\Status 2. Right click WindowsBackup in the left pane, and click "Export", under Export, and select "Desktop" in the Save in box and type "backup" as the File Name. Click "Save". Note: If any unexpected issue happens, we can restore the registry key simply by double-clicking the backup.reg file. Once we have completed the troubleshooting and the issue has been resolved we can delete this file.3. Right click the Status entry in the left pane, and choose delete, and click yes to confirm. 4. Restart your computer and test again. At the same time, it's better to compress the backup.reg file, and upload it to your public folder in the SkyDrive for analyzing. Good luck!John

Thanks for both your replies. - Yes, I ran set-up-backup twice to the end without error; that's when I realized the setting was stuck. - The System Image backups and the file backups have run OK every time, both manually initiated and via Scheduled Tasks. I've inspected the file-backup .zip files with my data and they look good. I also ran through the steps to restore a system image up to the point of actually making changes, and it seems OK. - I closed and reopened the backup window, and Control Panel, and rebooted Windows, and powered off the PC and got a night's sleep; message remains. - The PC is a new one with Windows 7 pre-installed; no earlier version on it. - I'm unwilling to delete the registry entry and lose all my current settings without being sure that will solve the problem and not create a worse one. But I exported the HKLM\...\WindowsBackup hive, copied it to a text file, and uploaded it to http://www.well.com/~ronks/HKLM_WindowsBackup_RegFile.txt Let me know if you see anything wrong.

Hi ronks,Your registry settings seem fine. Can you send an email to lokkum[at]microsoft[dot]com so that we can get more diagnostic information from you?Thanks,Sneha[MSFT]

OK, will do.

Have you got any update now?In addition, you can try to make a backup using the following steps to test our issue. 1. Open Control Panel ans start creating a backup from the Backup and Restore center.2. Select your local hard drive in order to save backup data.3. Once you have chosen your location, you can now choose what to backup. let's shoose the option "Let me choose". Note: uncheck the option before the "Include a system image of drivers: Unnamed driver,". 4. Now you can start your backup process. Please let us know the result as soon as possible. John

I ran into this exact same issue on my system. I run Windows 7 Ultimate. I configured backups and it ran fine the first time. However! I changed the Task Manager event to have the backup run multiple times in one week and this setting seems to have done it for me. When I have it run on multiple days, the backup claims that it has not been set up yet--however the backup still runs oddly enough. When I remove the multiple day trigger and leave it at the once a week interval as the windows interface is set up to handle apparently explicitly, then the backup came back showing as normal.

Maybe the twice-a-week schedule (or any non-default?) is related here. I briefly had the system recognizing that I had set up Windows Backup, after I ran the debug program and sent the results to Lokesh at Msft. But it wiped out my Scheduled Tasks settings and reset the auto-run to Sunday. I manually added Wednesday as a trigger and now once again the system tells me Windows Backup has not been set up.

Hi,Yes, there seems to be an issue here. The Backup and Restore control panel does not show the right status if multiple/complex triggers are defined. However, the backups run just fine according to schedule. As of now, Windows backup only officially supports daily/monthly or weekly scheduling. We shall consider changing the behaviour in future. Regret the inconvenience caused to you.Thanks,Sneha[MSFT]

I wonder if there is a way to create a separate scheduled task to run a backup (system image, user files, or both). I tried that but evidently it needs to run under the SYSTEM user account. (It seemed to run but completed in about 20 seconds instead of three hours, a tipoff that it was not successful.)

Hi ronks,There is a possible workaround.1. Export the AutomaticBackup task under \Microsoft\Windows\WindowsBackup and save it to a familiar location.2. Now, right click on the tasks pane under the same path and select Import task.3. Select the saved XML when the menu pops up.4. Save the task under a different name, Ex: AutomaticBackup25. Change triggers to desired value. Be careful that you do not have the same time for the two tasks. 6. Save the task.Hope this works for you.Thanks,Sneha[MSFT]

Thanks! I'll take a look at it.