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Vista Access is Denied

You may see the following error in your backup logs:

Warn 2008/10/20 07:30 "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop" Access is denied.
Warn 2008/10/20 07:30 "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Favorites" Access is denied.
Warn 2008/10/20 07:30 "C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents" Access is denied.
You may also see many other directories giving the 'Access is denied' error.

As of now the software will not support backups of Windows Vista ‘Junction Points’ these are basically ‘symbolic links’ that are created on the filesystem to provide backwards compatibility as well as proper directory structure for the C:\Users folder. Sadly this is one of the many flaw’s within Vista that may never be fixed. Even the OS is unable to properly access these junction points. You can easily test this yourself by going into:

Control Panel > Folder Options > View > And Uncheck ‘Hide protected operating system files(Recommended)’ > Apply > OK

Now go into the user’s ‘Documents’ folder you will see 3 new folders you’ve never seen before. The old style Windows XP My Pictures/Videos/Music folders. But if you try to access them, you will get the same ‘Access is denied’ error.

The only way to alleviate the errors/warnings from the backup logs is to un-check the above option and then go through every folder that is selected in the backup set through Windows Explorer and de-selecting any folders that have the bent arrow in the white box ( the windows xp style shortcut arrow ) on their icon. Because all the folders that are causing an ‘Access is denied’ error are links to already existing directories you do not need to worry about the software missing the actual data from their respective folders.

As you can see this is an issue with the way Vista treats it’s file structure. Removing the junction points is simply not an option as it will severely break any backwards compatibility. The only way those junction points can even by accessed are by Vista’s underlying kernel for certain operations.