Backup problem

[Kent Schroeder]

One of our users in Kenya gets the following error message when trying to backup: "Master database cannot produce backup, backup failed".  He is using version 6.  What can he do to correct the problem?

Kent Schroeder

[Steve Miller]

Hi Kent,

I'm not seeing an error message exactly like that, though I do see one
with "Master database cannot produce backup." The underlying command for
that is pretty straightforward, (BACKUP DATABASE db TO DISK =
C:\somepath), So I'm thinking either the path got corrupted, a spot on
the disk is bad and making life difficult, or the database got corrupted
somehow.

-- Was any software installed immediately before seeing the errors? Was
the Path environment variable manually adjusted? Just last Friday I saw
an error because of a path had a missing double quote ("). What is the
path?
-- Are there any compressed files or directories? That's the most common
problem we see. They can't be compressed.
-- Has the disk been checked for problems? (On XP: right-click My
Computer/Open/right-click the drive/properties/Tools tab/error-checking).

Ken is suggesting executing from a command prompt:

db backup <database_name_in_double_quotes>

and seeing what that does for you.

Steve

[Steve Miller]

Kent, this isn't a 64-bit machine, is it?

Steve