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Kudos0

N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 01-Aug-2015 | 7:32PM · 22 Replies ·

All right. I've been using Norton 360 for several years now. One of the reasons was the backup system: I was backing up to a networked hard drive and automated backups were cool.

I am also a real believer in defense in depth. I don't run my comp in admin mode. Yeah, there's malware that can get past that, but every little bit helps. This was hard (that is, impossible) to do in Windows XP and earlier, but ever since Windows 7 it's been easy.

So, with every version of N360 before 22.5.2.15, one could modify a setting whilst in Admin mode so that mere mortals (i.e., standard users) could run backup. Then, as a standard user, the auto backup feature of N360 and the associated backup set would fire off on its schedule or, if I was feeling antsy, I could fire it off myself. Fine, it worked, and once in a while I'd pull a random file off the server if something got corrupted and/or lost. That being what backups are for.

I just upgraded to Windows 10. As part of that upgrade, I went to the latest and greatest from Norton. And the permissions option for a standard user to set up backup sets, set up backup schedules, or even run backups, period, is gone.

I just got off chat with a Norton rep. He confirmed that N360 backup only runs if one is on an admin account, or (for scheduled operations) logged in on an admin account. No admin,  no backup. Period.

There also appears to be an issue that, if one is logged in on an admin account, then it may not be possible (or at least, really awkward) to do backups on other accounts' files and directories.

So, was this guy right? Is there something we're both missing? Darned if I'm going to run around naked in an Admin account on a computer that can access the web.

KBeck

Replies

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 12-Aug-2015 | 2:17AM · Permalink

Same problem here, with Windows 7. Norton should fix this (BTW, when in a standard user account, backup cannot be run
from the main Norton backup window but can be run (and fails) from the options available from system tray Norton icon).
I might have to restore all Norton-backed files, and back them all up from using Windows backup, if Norton doesn't fix this.
I completely agree about Admin accounts being used for general web browsing.

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 14-Aug-2015 | 4:44AM · Permalink

Can someone from Norton please comment on this?

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 06-Sep-2015 | 5:20AM · Permalink

+1

on all my PCs, users are not admin for security reasons.

I just upgraded to Noron Security with Backup, and the 25Gb storage is useless if not allowing std users configuring and running backups from Norton

Please fix it !

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 06-Sep-2015 | 7:50AM · Permalink

Admin account for setup and scheduled backups will run from Standard - afaik

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 06-Sep-2015 | 12:35PM · Permalink

So, I was kind of wondering about that - if, just running as a Standard User, whether backup would run or not.

I think the answer is Not.

Since upgrading to Windows 10, I've had to add/delete this program or that in order to get things functional. So, now and again over the past few weeks since originating this post, I've been popping into the Admin account from time to time. I noticed, during and after doing this, that Norton Backup ran. Further, since the subscription ran out on Norton 360, I had to get the successor, Norton Security with Backup. On that one, in Admin, I set the backup set and made the frequency "auto". According to the manual, if one misses the roughly once-a-week date, it'll run the next time the computer is idle.

I've been on and off the computer for the past couple of weeks and haven't logged in as Admin.

The Norton Security with Backup status window says no backup for the past 13 days. And, above that it says, "Your files are protected!". Sheesh.

Therefore: It only backs up if one is logged in as an Administrator.

Luckily, Windows 10 comes with a nifty backup feature, "Back up with File History", and one can point this tool at an external drive, which I have done. And I don't have to be logged on as an administrator in order to do it.

Listen, Symantec, at least two things:

  1. If you're going to require that people be strictly logged in as an administrator in order to make your product work, then say so. The Product Manual says things about looking at Backup Drive as administrator, but nowhere does it say you have to be an administrator in order for Norton to work in general.
  2. You guys are a security company. What the heck are you thinking by making people run in Admin mode? That's like running a Unix/Linux system as root. Have you decided this is the way to make people more secure?
  3. I know Unix, I know Linux. One can set up a cron job to run with elevated privileges. Heck, that's how mail and any number of other services work. So, if you need the users to set up the equivalent of a unix cron job with root privileges under Windows, how about some documentation on how to do it?

KBeck

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 09-Sep-2015 | 4:29PM · Permalink

Hey guys!

I'm going to ask the team to run some tests here and see what's going on. This doesn't sound right at all, and there might be a bug here. I can't give you more than that right now, but I promise I will look into it and I'll come back as soon as I have more information. I apologize for the inconvenience - be patient with us while we figure out what's going on!

Thank you,

rafa

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 11-Sep-2015 | 6:33AM · Permalink

Hi @KBeck, @Jeff Glynn & @Giorgio,

I have sent you private messages with instructions on how to collect logs. It would be mighty helpful if you could send us the logs. Please check your inbox when you get a chance. Thank you so much.

Gayathri Rajendiran
Norton Forums Administrator
Symantec Corporation

Gayathri R | Norton Forums Global Community Administrator | NortonLifeLock
Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 11-Sep-2015 | 1:23PM · Permalink

Rafa and Gayathri, please see this related topic.

https://community.norton.com/en/forums/login-admin-level-windows-account-necessary-order-run-some-scheduled-tasks

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 11-Sep-2015 | 8:55PM · Permalink

I am in the same boat and cannot run my backup as a standard user.  Even when I run the product as an administrator it does not recognise this elevated level of operation.  Norton - please fix

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 12-Sep-2015 | 2:57PM · Permalink

So, things are getting a bit more interesting. After seeing bjm's comment that Backup can be run from a Standard account around Tuesday or so, I went, "Hmph! Really?", since I had been

  1. Attempting to run Backup by first clicking on the Norton icon and, from within the Norton menu, clicking on Backup, then Run Backup, with the usual "Access Denied. You need to be an administrator to perform this action."
  2. Doing #1, but right-clicking the Norton icon and doing "Run as administrator", with the same results as #1.

So, started fiddling around. In the notifications area, there's a Norton icon. (That's the area with the up arrow in the bottom right corner of a Windows screen.) For the first time ever, right clicked that icon. Up pops a menu:

Open Norton Security with Backup

Run QuickScan

Run LiveUpdate

Run BackupNow

View Recent History

Get Support

Turn on Silent Mode (greyed out)

Disable Smart Firewall (greyed out)

Check for New Version

I swear, first time I've seen this and I've been using Norton 360 (and now Norton Internet Security with Backup) for five or six years.

Clicked on "Run BackupNow" - and, shock and weirdness, it ran. From a Standard account.

So, that was last Tuesday. On Thursday, I got on as a Standard account holder, did this and that, closed down all the programs and left the computer on, something that has certainly been happening from time to time over the past month or so with N. Security & Backup. All those other times, no backup had occurred. This afternoon, fired up the comp preparatory to commenting here - and a backup had run 11 hours ago.

OK. I have no idea what's going on under the hood with Norton Security and Backup. But it looks like once it is run from a Standard account with that right-click, the automatic scheduler for the Backup Set, set up in Admin mode, starts to work. It certainly wasn't working before, but it is working now.

So, under these circumstances, I suppose Norton + support could declare "Victory!" and run away, Monty Python style. However.. I'm a fairly literate computer user; if pressed, I could design a computer, transistor by transistor, from the ground up. (It'd be slow, really slow, but I'd get there, VHDL and all. ). I've also written a few dinky operating systems for dedicated controllers, but I certainly know what an ISR is and how to use one. Given all that, it still took me a few stabs and a hint to figure out this Backup problem.

But Ma and Pa Sixpack aren't quite in my league, I'm the kind of relative they call for support. And if they didn't have me on this issue, they'd be stuck without a clue what to do, and when their hard drive went belly up, they'd be SOL as well. And if Symantec's solution is to tell Ma and Pa to run in admin mode, they'll do it - and be at greater risk from malware and scam artists world wide. And Ma and Pa is where Symantec's money is, not in the 1 in 1000 type that I am.

Symantec: You guys need to properly describe the steps required to reliably get Backup working, and not just for maniacs like me.

KBeck

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 12-Sep-2015 | 3:06PM · Edited: 12-Sep-2015 | 3:11PM · Permalink

maybe, Symantec will explain >
Turn on Silent Mode (greyed out)
Disable Smart Firewall (greyed out)
Are greyed out setting do to standard user account.
I've looked for reference to standard user in Norton change log.
I can't find Norton change log.
Um, is Disable Auto-Protect greyed out too...?

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 12-Sep-2015 | 3:29PM · Permalink

Yes, it will SOMETIMES run from the Norton icon in the system tray (on my system, no icon tray options are greyed out.). However, it will NEVER run manually from the main Norton interface in a standard user account, and only sometimes automatically.

Also, I have a Dell Studio Laptop, (32-bit) recently upgraded to Windows 10. Noton Backup is working perfectly in a standard user account.

There is a problem here, which Norton needs to sort, before I find another backup method.

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 14-Sep-2015 | 6:25AM · Permalink

Hi @ChrisFarr,

Could you please check you inbox when you find time? Thank you.

-Gayathri

Gayathri R | Norton Forums Global Community Administrator | NortonLifeLock
Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 14-Sep-2015 | 10:48AM · Permalink

Hello everyone again,

A bit of an update while we keep working on this. There are two things to talk about here...

The first thing I want to touch upon is the absence, in Windows 10, of the "Non-Admins Access to Settings" option in the menu. This should not affect your capacity of running backups while in standard user mode (more on this later), but I wanted to explain the reason why that option is no longer there. Simply put, it's a matter of development capacity. Unfortunately for us, we can't work on everything that we would want to: the Norton products are very large and complex, and sometimes we have to "prune" some of the elements (because they are old and no longer relevant, or they see no use, or other reasons) so we can try and focus on those feature that will bright most value to most users.

In the case of "Non-Admins Access to Settings", we saw that less than 0.1% of our users were interacting wit this switch at all. This, in addition to the fact that carrying it into Windows 10 would be complicated (driving away resources from other features) made us decided to drop it in this version. We understand some users (like those of you posting in this thread) might miss it and we are truly sorry about it, but it's a (sad) fact of software development that you can't always build everything everyone wants. We should have been more clear about this change, though, so it doesn't come as a surprise, and for that we apologize - we intend to be better at this in the future!

With this said, the second point is: we have identified a bug that, in some cases, prevents standard users from running backup from the product UI. This should be addressed in a future release. We also tested and, in our system, backup works while in standard user mode, in these cases:

  • From the system tray (right click on the "Norton Security with Backup" icon on the system tray -> Run Backup Now)
  • Following an automatic trigger (as per your configured backup schedules)

From what I read in this post, this seems not to be the case for the people in here. There is clearly something wrong going on, but we haven't been able to reproduce the error. Because of this, please make sure to follow the instructions that Gayathri sent you and share your logs with us - the dev team will look at them and we will see what is causing this to not work for you.

We'll make sure to keep everyone posted with out findings!

Thank you for your patience,

rafa

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 14-Sep-2015 | 5:59PM · Permalink

Thanks KBeck

Fixed my problem.

Cheers

Chrs

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 18-Nov-2015 | 7:21AM · Permalink

Hi everyone,

We have released a new product update 'Norton 22.5.5.14'  [English Only now] which fixes this issue. 

Announcement Here: https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-update-announcements/norton-2255-product-update-available-now

Could you please run Live Update until all the updates are installed and then check for the issue?

Please let us know if you still face the problem.

Thanks for your patience.

Mohanakrishnan G | Norton Forums Administrator | Symantec Corporation
Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 19-Nov-2015 | 7:59PM · Permalink

Hokay, got the announcement, ran Live Update, rebooted the comp, and am now up in version 22.5.5.14.

There was a notification on the Norton UI: It wanted to run disk cleanup and such. Clicked on Disk Cleanup: Got the inevitable "You need to be an Administrator" prompt. Sigh. Went into Admin, ran disk cleanup, then back to Standard User.

Got the Norton UI up, selected Backup, then clicked the Run Backup button. It ran, no hiccups, and I'm looking at the "completed!" screen.

So, guys, thanks. The main backup is running from the user interface, as the Gods (otherwise known as Software System Architects) have desired.

KBeck

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 25-Nov-2015 | 8:40AM · Permalink

Hi Everyone,

A new build of 22.5.5 product update has been posted back to the Live Update servers. This patch will address the Backup for Standard User issue as well as the other issues mentioned above in the announcement blog . This update is available via Live Update. [Released in a phased manner]

Version: 22.5.5.15

Please run Live Update until updates are installed and then check if the issue is resolved

Mohanakrishnan G | Norton Forums Administrator | Symantec Corporation
Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 30-Dec-2015 | 6:32AM · Permalink

Backup still requires Administrator privileges to run, exactly to same as pre 22.5.5.15. Any chance of it being sorted?
(I have two laptops where this problem does not occur; they are 32-bit machines, whereas the desktop which has the problem is 64-bit.)

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 07-May-2016 | 2:07AM · Permalink

Mohan_G: Any progress on this?

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 07-Jul-2016 | 6:42AM · Edited: 07-Jul-2016 | 7:14AM · Permalink

The problem seems to be the security settings on the external (USB) Backup drive, in my case F:\. The security setting permissions on the N360_Backup folder must list Users ( "Computer name"\Users to allow Read and Execute, List Folder Contents, and Read.  Authenticated Users (if not present it must be added) must allow Modify, Read and Execute, List Folder Contents, Read and Write. I added this change two days ago, and Backup has been running normally from a standard user account ever since, in both automatic and manual mode.
Also, perhaps the recent update to the Norton Toolbar may have changed things.

Will keep this updated if any changes occur.

Kudos0

Re: N360 Backup No Longer Works for Standard Users

Posted: 11-Jul-2016 | 9:11AM · Edited: 11-Jul-2016 | 9:12AM · Permalink

Still working from standard user account. It seems that the folder permissions are not set up
properly when backup drive is first nominated for backup. Norton should investigate this. The problem seems to be solved.

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