Windows XP Home sfc /scannow won't run from passworded account?

[Phil Schwarz]

Hi --

We have the computers on our home network (all of them WinXP Home SP3) set up to implement "poor man's disaster recovery": all of our machines are set up so that the default directory for data files for applications critical to work and school (eg, Word, Excel, Powerpoint docs) is each user's home directory on a single machine -- and that machine runs 2 scheduled tasks (at 4 am and 5 am respectively) to copy any changes in those directories to a backup copy on each of 2 other machines. Short of a disaster that destroys all of the machines simultaneously, that gives us reasonable and inexpensive recovery from inevitable disk crashes.

The scheduled tasks that do the copying run as one of the users on the main machine (a user account present on the backup machines as well). WinXP Home seems to require that that user account have a nonblank password (on the main machine) in order to run scheduled tasks.

I notice that I am unable to run sfc /scannow as that user, even though that user is an administrator.

I get the message:

You must be an administrator running a console session in order to use the Windo

ws File Checker utility.

I *am* able to run sfc /scannow as another user that is an administrator, but does not have a nonblank password.

Any idea why this is so? What's going on here?

TIA

-- Phil