Restores taking forever, byte count remains at 0, percent complete is blank

[Hawk312]

I am having trouble with restore performance using Backup Exec 10d. Each time I try to restore, it takes at least a half hour until the Byte Count actually starts from 0. Sometimes the wait is days! It is connected to an HP autoloader which consistently backs up data without issue, and the byte count typically starts within a minute or two of backup start. I am not seeing any errors in the alerts tab, and the only thing that really changes from the monitor screen after starting the backup is the "Job Type" field which gets stuck in "Restore" status, and the elapsed time. The auto loader stays in the "drive reading" status the entire time. Any ideas?

[Ken_Putnam]

If you shut down all the Backup Exec services and do an NTbackup job, does a restore from that start right away, or does it hang also?

Are you using Symantec drivers, or the HP drivers?  Have you tried switching