Windows Network Backup does not start anymore - blame Samsung Magician

Recently I upgraded to a new Samsung SSD. Love it. The speed boost over even a last-gen SSD is amazing. But that's not what this post is about. Since I upgraded my primary drive, it was also time for a clean Windows install. I guess some people would find this tedious, but I actually enjoy setting things up, starting from a nice clean slate. The frustration, however, was that stuff that previously just worked, now didn't.

It took a lot of headscratching trying to figure out why I was unable to set up automated backups again, using Windows backup, as outlined in a much earlier post of mine. Well, turns out the old post is still accurate and up-to-date, and that the new factor is now Samsung Magician to deal with.

It is otherwise a fantastic piece of software, one that further customizes your system for improved speed or reliability. It serves as a good reminder to enable AHCI on your motherboard if you've never used it, checks that you're using SATA6, etc. You can also run benchmarks to make sure you're squeezing the performance out of your drive. But again, that's not what this post is about.

Sure enough, after having done a prior optimize, Windows backup was turned off via Samsung Magician. But not really, because I can still access "Backup and Restore" from the Control Panel, and even set up my backup location and credentials; the damn thing just won't work.

Turns out it deactivates the Windows service, but not the GUI. Hit up your Run prompt (CMD+R) and enter services.msc:

Find "Windows Backup" in the list of services, and sure enough, it will be disabled:

Now, you can either choose to leave the Startup Type as disabled, and just start the service manually this time, but that makes no sense for automated backups, as your service already needs to be on when the backup is initiated. Set the Startup Type to automatic, start the service, and save the settings:

You should once again be able to run a scheduled Windows Backup as usual!