How to fix MARS backup to Azure from hanging forever when running from the windows 10 scheduler?

Question

I'm using the Microsoft Azure Backup (MARS agent) to backup on premise Windows servers and laptops. It works fine on my server. On the Windows 10 laptops, the scheduled job hangs forever. I found a discussion about this on: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/631093/ms-azure-recovery-services-agent-(mars)-scheduled This Q&A webpage says the arguments for the PowerShell command in the scheduler is missing a closing quote at the end. Also, the task needs to run as 'Windows 10' rather than the default of Windows Vista.

I tried making these two changes, but the scheduled is still hanging.

When I run an immediate backup from the 'Microsoft Azure Backup' console, it works fine. The problem is the scheduled backups. Is there additional information about this problem?

Answer 1

@Rebecca Christman Thanks for sharing the solution with us. This would help other users who may have encountered this issue and looking for solution.

"Sharing the solution below for the benefit of community"

Issue: MARS agent scheduled backups on Windows 10 were failing

Cause: PowerShell execution policy was set to "restricted"

Resolution: Setting PowerShell LocalMachine ExecutionPolicy to RemoteSigned fixed the problem. The documentation says to set the ExecutionPolicy to Unrestricted. This worked, and also allowed the MARS scheduled jobs to run.

Hope this helps others on Microsoft Q&A community platform.

@Rebecca Christman Thanks once again for your time and patience in this matter!

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