SUMMARY
Failure to back up hard links on Windows 10 or Server 2016 may cause certain Windows applications to fail following bare metal recovery or Windows replica restore.
ISSUE
Previous versions of the Unitrends Windows agent could fail to properly back up hard links on Windows 10 or Server 2016 systems. This could cause certain Windows applications — particularly those related to the Microsoft store as well as operations related to Windows updates — to fail to run following bare metal recovery or Windows replica restore. This issue occurs in otherwise successful restore operations.
RESOLUTION
To prevent possible issue, customers that are protecting Windows 2010 and/or Windows Server 2016 via bare metal are strongly encouraged to update their Windows agent to version 10.3.1. Upon updating to agent 10.3.1 the Unitrends backup will be promoted to a full.
Agent links are below. These agents will also be present in the appliance samba share after updating paid license appliance versions to 10.3.1-3 or higher.
32-bit Unitrends agent v.10.3.0-4 for Windows 10 and Server 2016
64-bit Unitrends agent v.10.3.0-4 for Windows 10 and Server 2016
CAUSE
Unitrends has identified a change in the way that Microsoft distributes patch updates for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. Hard links may be created associated with temp files after a Windows update is applied if the updated system is not rebooted prior to the next scheduled backup. If these temp files are not included as a part of an incremental file level backup, issues with hard links can cause a bare metal restore not to boot properly. To ensure that our customers are protected, a special Windows agent has been created as version 10.3.1-3.
NOTES
Following agent upgrade, some caveats related to Windows hard links still apply:
- If deleted hard links were present in the recycle bin when the backup was taken, Windows replicas — when booted to Audit or Live mode — may display an error message stating that the recycle bin is corrupted. This error message asks if you want to empty the recycle bin. Click Yes to clean up the corruption.
- Full backups of Windows 10 assets (though this may also affect other Windows versions) may complete with the following error message: "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process." Furthermore, these backup jobs may take longer than expected to complete.
- If issues persist, it may be necessary to reinstall the application following recovery.