Quick Fix: Essentials Connector Install Fails after Windows 10 Rollback

I was helping a friend with some Essentials Connector install issues last night. One of the clients was a Windows 7 Pro machine, that had recently been rolled back from Windows 10. On this network the Server was a Windows Home Server 2011, and the connector had been working fine following the upgrade to Windows 10. After the roll back, the backups stopped working, so my friend decided to uninstall the connector and reinstall.

This is when he discovered he could not reinstall the connector. It would get to around 99.9% complete, and even appear in the dashboard, but at the last second the progress bar would start going back to the start and we would see an error on the Connector install screen.

I tried a few different tricks i have picked up for installing the connector, nothing helped.

Eventually i found an entry in one of the log files, saying that the Client Backup task could not be created.

Unfortunatley i did not take a screen shot as it was late and i wasn’t thinking. So here is a picture of an angry log

Ok it is an angry Fox on a log. I just googled Angry Log and this is the best i could find. 

It was actually taken by an American guy called Chris Montano Jr and if you want to own this picture you can purchased it in a number of fetching frames, or even as a greetings card from FineArtAmerica.com

Where was i? Oh yes, tasks..

This led me into Task Scheduler to try and remove any left over tasks or ‘gubbins’ that had been left from the upgrade/downgrade.

When we opened Task Scheduler we were presented with the common ‘This task is corrupt or has been tampered with’ for pretty much every task on the PC.

So i set him the task of repairing that, as it was late and i wanted to go to bed.

He used the the ‘Repair Tasks’ tool from Codeplex. https://repairtasks.codeplex.com/

After repairing the Task Scheduler we are happy to report that the Connector installed successfully!