Feb 04, 2015

The problem

If you are backing up to/from a network share or a mapped network drive, you may run into a situation when the app doesn't "see" the location.

In 99% of cases this happens because the app is switched to run as Administrator. More specifically, it's caused by the fact that Windows maintains two user *sessions* for each logged in user. One session is for running apps with regular user rights and another – for the “run as admin”, elevated execution.

These sessions share the desktop, but each of them gets its own list of mapped drives and share connections. So mapping a drive in one doesn't make it automatically appear in another.

The solution

There are three ways to resolve this issue -

1.  Apply a registry fix to keep network lists in sync between two sessions -
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee844140%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
( but in a typical Microsoft fashion it doesn't appear to always work )

2.  Issue “net use /persistent” from an elevated (admin) prompt to make a sticky network connection for the admin session

3.  Configure share username/password in the app itself -
https://bvckup2.com/support/forum/topic/413

Also, it's generally a better idea to use explicit network paths (i.e. \\server\share) rather than mapped drives when running as Admin. This leads to a simpler and more maintainable configuration.