In answers to your questions..
1. pre and post job commands must be in a batch file, and the commands must return inside that batch file - I will explain..
Create a batch file, put in mspaint.exe - run the batch file - what happens? mspaint opens, but the batch file itself is still open - close mspaint and the batch file closes.
Create another batch file - put in - net use - run the batch file - you will find the batch files closes straight away.
For the BE pre-post commands to work, they must be like the second example given above - hope that makes sense.
2. Jobs hanging in pre-processing are usually a sign that the Open File Option is trying to take a snapshot - if using AOFO, the default for the time-out is 33 minutes - if after this time the snapshot hasn't been made, the backup will still continue on.
3. That is normal, will alway be System?State.
4. Backing up System Volume Information - is exactly that - it is backing up the System Volume Information directory
5. If a job doesn't cancel - the only way to do this is to try and stop the BE services. That being said, most probably the Job Engine service will not stop.
The way around this is to try one of the following:
- Using task manager - try and End Task on the bengine.exe process
- User the windows resource kit kill command ie. kill
- drwtsn32 -p
You can find the PID from Task Manager.
Once Job Engine is stopped, the other services should stop without issues.
