Help resolving File History error?

Question

Hi! I know File History is on its way out, not supported, etc., but I *really* hope someone has some ideas for me.

Here's the situation:

My laptop's HD failed. I was running Windows 11, and I used File History to back up to a NAS hard drive. Normally I'm pretty good about saving a complete system image on a regular basis, but I got sloppy this time, alas.

I replaced the laptop HD and did a fresh install of Windows 11. I followed the usual steps to reconnect the PC to the FIle History on my NAS.

-Selected the drive

-Ticked the "I want to use a previous back-up on this File History drive" checkbox

-Selected the backup

-Turned File History on

Here's where the trouble begins. File History did not run. Pressing "Run Now" appears to do nothing. When I check the log in the Event Viewer, it lists an error Event 200 "Unable to start a backup cycle for configuration C:\Users[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\FileHistory\Configuration\Config"

I've been searching for days. Here are steps I've taken:

-Run checks on the new local HD and the attached storage

-Used DISM to repair the new Windows installation

-Turned off BitLocker encryption on the HD because I've had BitLocker jam things up with backups in the past.

-Attempted to reset File History by turning off File History, deleting the everything in the \FileHistory folder in the above path, rebooting, and turning File History back on.

-Also tried deleting the FileHistory folder itself. But each time I turn File History back on, it remembers the backup -- i.e., I have NOT been able to reset File History and try to start from scratch.

I can recover important files by just downloading them from the NAS backup, but since File History has appended datestamp to many (all?) of the filenames, it's causing functionality issues in certain cases.

Is there anything else I can try to get my new Windows install to connect to my backup so that I can restore properly? Many thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions.

***moved from Windows / Windows 11 / Recovery and backup***

Answer 1

Hello,

You will receive this error when File History is turned off or the File History drive is manually deleted. I suggest you try turning File History back on again, refer to the following steps:

1. Type "File History" in the Windows search box, then select and open it.
2. Click the "Enable" button to restart File History to back up your personal files.

Or you can go to "Start" -> "Settings" -> "Update & Security" -> "Backup" -> "Automatically back up my files" in "Back up with File History".

Best Regards

Zunhui

Answer 2

Thanks for the reply, but it's definitely not a problem with File History being turned off. The error is being thrown when File History is turned on and tries to run -- sometimes the message that File History is backing up my files appears for a moment.

After reading and troubleshooting until late last night, my current thinking is that there's some problem or mismatch somewhere between the config files that are on the backup drive and the ones that are created on my PC's hard drive.

I noticed that the original config files, Config1.xml and Config2.xml, that are on the File History drive were overwritten at some point (I assume when I first tried to reconnect to File History) because Catalog1.edb and Catalog2.edb are still shown as Last Modified on 9/10/2024, the date of my last successful File History save, but the config files are dated 9/19/2024 -- i.e., yesterday night, the last time I tried running File History. So each attempt I'm making is still writing to the config files on the File History drive, but something's amiss and the process stops.

Answer 3

Hi,

I suggest you start the computer in clean mode to check the information of third-party applications. I also suggest you open the event viewer to see if there is any related error information.

How to perform a clean boot in Windows - Microsoft Support

Best Regards

Zunhui

Answer 4

For the benefit of future searchers--I feel your pain. Once you get yourself straightened out, get yourself a *real* disaster recovery backup. File History has been abandoned, sadly.

So anyway, I was forced to give up on trying to restore my File History files normally. I wish I had a better solution for you. The good news is that all the data is there in your backup. The bad news is that every file is date-stamped. It's not a magic bullet, but I used a free little utility called ReNamer at https://www.den4b.com/products/renamer to help.

I wish ReNamer had the capacity to just dump my Data folder into it and let it rip -- depending on how many files you're trying to recover and how organized (or not) they are, maybe you can. But it did make recovery feasible at least, because you can use it to strip out the date-stamps in batches. I found that if you try to do more than three or four thousand files at a time, it starts to struggle. Copy your backup to your new Windows installation and go to work on it.

Good luck!