[magic-whale]

I have a WinXP SP2 fast P4 1.5G RAM computer that began to slow to being unusable when I installed a Maxtor OneTouch backup external drive. The culprit was MaxBackServiceInt.exe, a Mxxtor process that was hogging CPU cycles and causing the processor to go to 100% of capacity. Removing the process immediately solved the problem. Does anyone have familiarity with this problem and/or a fix? Thanks much!

[JohnWill]

Personally, I'd just stop using the Maxtor program. There are plenty of better backup utilities.

Backup Applications For All Seasons:

For boot image backups, Acronis True Image, available at NewEgg for $30 downloaded, search for Acronis.

For file backups, Cobian Backup, available free from the author's site.

For synchronizing backup folders, SyncToy, available free from Microsoft.

[magic-whale]

Thanks very much John for the quick reply. The best solution probably is to change backup programs, although I'm still interested in hearing from anyone else who has experienced something like this.

[kapecki]

One of my clients is having exactly the same problem. The Maxtor module MaxBackServiceInt.exe is taking up virtually all the CPU cycles. But the problem came on gradually after several weeks of useage of the external backup drive. Uninstalling the Maxtor software returned the system to normal. We are going to experiment furtheras well as write Maxtor (I've found nothing on their tech support forum) and if anything useful turns up (beyond simply dumping the program), I'll post it here.

Like you, I'd be interested in hearing from anyone else who's experienced this problem.

[kel638]

I got the same problem, And now I disable the service in the startup list. And I can use Sync only. I found the support is very poor about Maxtor, No reply............
And I got the installation problem too if the PC is ENG version and the regional (Unicode set to Chinese which finally solved got another verison in Chinese Website). This program got many bugs...... waste my whole weekend to solve those problem. Lucky I didnt format my PC before i found the problem. Very Poor Experience.......

[bp936]

I gave up using MaXTOR onetouch also, same reason. I used Retrospect backup that came with it. Once it backed up all the harddrive and after that without clicking on ontouch, it also constantly wanted to check I guess what to backup. I unclicked at the startup, didn't like the way it backedup up anyway.I never understood how I can get my files back. Now I just copy what I want to MaXTOR, especially my pictures and docs. I also made a zip directory where I put my downloaded programs and re-install them when I want to. Windows doesn't seem to like they way Maxtor restores them. I had to reformat my hardddrive. Luckily I had all my files (I think) copied to it. I had a lot of problems with the programs restore, all exe files were missing, but the directories have been rebuilt, so it was useless.
Maybe someday I'll learn what backup really means. I;d rather just copy things back and forth and this way I can use my files on the laptop or desktop or at my kids computer. It works perfectly well this way.
Incase anyone is interested, Maxtor works well just plugged in as a drive with XP computers, but on Win98 computers, the computer has to be restarted with Maxtor switched on and plugged in or else it won't show up.

[kapecki]

Maxtor tech support's only option is to disable the software and do backups manually or with other software.

[JohnWill]

Gee, see post #2.

[dmarieh]

Thanks for all the helpful information. I got a Maxtor external drive for Christmas, hooked it up and have noticed the same degradation in run time (it is currently hogging 50% of the CPU). I have a question, though, if I just end the task (through task manager), will I recover the performance, or will it cause other ill effects? I always remove it from the task bar, but didn't realize that this process was still running in the background. Should I just un-install the software altogether? I sure don't want to crash my computer. Thanks in advance!

[JohnWill]

Personally, I'd uninstall it and use some of the other suggested solutions. If you terminate the task, it'll be back when you reboot.

[Buin_Inc]

How about the next theory?
If you look at the CPU usage of the System Idle Process (indicating how much cpu capacity is not being used) with MaxBackServiceInt.exe active you see it's probably (around) 0. When you delete MaxBackServiceInt.exe the usage of the System IDle Process will take over this cpu time with the same amount as MaxBackServiceInt.exe had. Both are very low priority processes, MaxBackServiceInt.exe slightly higher than SystemIdleProcess, and will give up their cpu time immediately if an other process is started.

[The Older Guy]

The program loops if 'Automatic Backup' is 'On' but the schedule is 'Never' (presumably looking for the next backup day). In Step 2, check at least one day, and then click 'Off' after step 2 finishes. If the service is already running in a loop. restart it, or the computer.

[new tech guy]

Any way you can set its startup service to manual in the system then just have the process be running when you are atcually using the program? Might be the best fix i could think of.

[The Older Guy]

... which I am just guessing here is to start the backup operation at the times you schedule it to happen. If you don't have it running all the time, it can't do that. Of course, the bug we're talking about here doesn't happen if there's really anything to schedule, so if you're affected by the bug, you probably don't care whether it can schedule a backup. However, it runs 5 threads, and is pretty big, so it probably has some other functions as well. If you just tell it not to schedule anything instead of to schedule nothing, it runs quite innocuously, doing essentially nothing, and you don't have to figure out how to get to the 'Services' Administrators Tool to set it to Manual mode.

[ipbill]

I might be too late with this. My one touch drive was not even connected to my laptop. These files were running taking a lot of processor power.

Go to the Task Manager ( ctrl delete ) My system is Win XP Pro sp2.

Select the services tab
Uncheck the following:
MaxBackServiceInt
MaxSynService

Bill