How-To Geek

I have a new HP laptop running Windows7 and I want Norton Ghost to execute a scheduled backup at 8 PM everyday - a time when the PC is usually in Sleep mode. (I have the power plan set to put the PC to Sleep after 20 minutes of idle time.) I have set the power management plan to allow timed events to wake up the PC. I have also scheduled a simple DOS task (echo wake up) to run at 7:55 PM whether or not I am logged on, and to wake up the PC when the task runs.

Around 10:00 PM when I am about to turn-off the PC for the day, I move the mouse which wakes up the PC, and Ghost displays a window saying it is starting the scheduled backup. This is an incremental backup that takes only about 2 minutes so it should have completed shortly after 8 PM. I now have to wait for the backup to complete before shutting down the PC.

It seems as if Ghost wakes up at 8 PM and wants to start the backup, but then has to wait until I wake up the PC before completing the backup.

Note: Ghost does not try to run at all if I don't have the DOS task setup n the Task Scheduler.

Any ideas how I can get Ghost to run to completion within a few minutes of 8 PM?

Which Ghost are you running? 15 is the ONLY one valid for W7. We run it here and schedule the backups in Ghost and NEVER had it fail to backup as long as the computer was on? Asleep or not, it always ran.

Under VIEW select EVENT LOG, are there anything but INFORMATION entries there?

Irv S.

Is the computer state off or on? Is it hibernating or the disk and display 'off'? Sleep and hibernating ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_mode are two different things.

You used the word 'sleep' which generally means powering down some h/w, disk, network adapter, display, etc., but the computer is still 'operating'. With hibernation memory is copied to disk and the computer essentially is non-functional. With sleep the mouse turns back on the devices off as does computer operations that would occur when it is sleeping, like checking for e-mails, running scheduled tasks, etc. When hibernated nothing can happen until the computer is restored (turned back on).

Many people use these terms interchangeably, so now I suspect you have it hibernating. Is this the case?

Irv S.

I don't know what to tell you. We (on 2 computers) just allow the disk and display to power down after a short period of time and we've never missed a Ghost backup if the computer is on in that state?

Irv S.

Xhi,

Thanks for the suggestion. I have now set it to turn-off the display after 5 minutes and the hard drive after 15 minutes. The backup executed as desired last night. As you said, this should be sufficient.

Gepaine, just use screen saver before turn off". In the screen saver window check the "On, resume display logon screen box"