The Windows 2000 Backup utility (NTBackup.exe) will only start when I disable the “Remote Storage Service”. This allows the backup to complete across to floppy discs and USB drives, although I cannot restore files without the Remote Storage Service running. However, when I attempt to start the Remote Storage Service it hangs the Services control panel or alternatively may start and then immediately stop the service. Can you assist in getting this service working, as at the moment I cannot restore anything from backup.

First, it should be mentioned that Windows 2000 is a very old version of Windows, which is now over 10 years old. While the age of the software itself does not present a problem, issues arise with the support now available for the software. Windows 2000 reached the end of its support lifecycle on 13 July 2010 and from this date no new updates will be made available for Windows 2000. Most concerning is that new security updates and fixes are no longer being provided for Windows 2000 making your operating system installation rather vulnerable to new security flaws which are discovered. If you are comfortable using Windows 2000 then you may see the lack of support as a ploy for you to upgrade to the latest version of Windows. However, to be realistic, the software manufacturer cannot support legacy versions of Windows forever (otherwise we will still have security patches being made available for Windows 3.1 and the like!). Considering that Windows 2000 has now been superseded three times (Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7) it is a reasonable compromise that support for Windows 2000 has now ceased. For those users who are wondering, Windows XP will reach the end of its support lifecycle on 8 April 2014 (around 13 years after its original release on 25 October 2001) but this should hopefully provide more than sufficient time to migrate across to the newer versions of Windows.

While this does not directly answer your question, it would be worthwhile upgrading to a new version of Windows as soon as possible. Alternatively, it is likely that because you are running Windows 2000 you have quite an old computer (which may not be able to cope with newer versions of Windows, such as Windows 7, particularly well). In this situation it may be worthwhile to invest in a new computer which does have the required performance for a more modern operating system. Since new computers should also come with the latest version of Windows this would save you from having to purchase a retail copy of Windows 7 yourself. PC manufacturers such as Dell (www.dell.com.au) generally have very good deals with Windows 7 pre-loaded which you may find to be an affordable compromise.

In the meantime we should look at resolving the problem regarding the Remote Storage Service preventing the Backup utility from properly functioning. The Remote Storage Service (or RSS for short) allows the storage on a computer to be organised into various tiers. At the top of the hierarchy you have the primary computer storage, which is generally the internal computer hard drive. Generally such storage is faster but more expensive. You can then proceed down the hierarchy to lower-levels known as remote storage, such as floppy discs, external drives or tape. These are generally slower but less expensive. As you can see, there is generally a trade-off between speed of storage and expense (for example, solid state drives are significantly quicker than standard magnetic hard drives, and thus solid state drives are substantially more expensive per megabyte than magnetic hard drives).

Remote Storage Service problems can be quite tricky to fix as there are various databases associated with this service that could have become corrupted. Having not used the Windows Backup utility for my own backups (let alone the Windows 2000 version of this utility) it will be difficult to provide specific advice on how this problem can be resolved. Even though it is a relatively heavy-handed suggestion, the various articles which I have found regarding fixing problems with the Remote Storage Service discuss the need to complete a reinstallation of Windows. Therefore, the best option to resolving this problem (unless you are able to uncover additional information in the meantime) would be to backup all of your data and then complete a reinstallation of Windows 2000.

Obviously if you wish to undertake the reinstallation process it would be rather risky relying on the backups taken by the Windows Backup utility since you currently have no way to verify that the backups are good and recoverable since the very problem that you are attempting to fix is preventing you from recovering the backups. Additionally, the problem being experienced may not necessarily be resolved through a reinstallation of Windows (as it is quite possible this is a bug in Windows which cannot be fixed since there are no longer any updates available for Windows 2000) and you would not be able to recover the backups at all. Therefore, I suggest that you manually copy across to an external drive all the data you wish to keep and then once the reinstallation has completed, copy that data back across to your computer.

Even though the reinstallation of Windows 2000 may resolve the problem this does not mitigate the exposure of your computer running an unsupported operating system. As such, I would still strongly recommend that you seriously consider either upgrading Windows on your existing computer or purchasing a new computer running Windows 7 so that you are using a supported operating system with security patches and updates still available.