BT Cloud Won't Start

[AJW1100]

Double up on Photos and Music Folder Contents.

Boxed set of 60 1960's tracks in two CD's. one CD has 56 tracks instead of 30 the other has 57 tracks instead of 30. So not all have been duplicated.

[kencridland]

Thank you Neil for your moderator post on BT Cloud. My previous post was only partly completed when I pressed post by accident, so please read this one.

As others have indicated, your post raises more questions than it answers. I like others would love to know the answers to their questions, including - 

1) Why was it essential to mess up a working system for one than clearly does not work nearly as well?

2) Why were BT paying customers treated like this, being used as guinea pigs for software that was not fit for purpose?

3) Why have useful functions been missed out of what claims to be an update?

In my case, BT Cloud did start, but not properly. Here are the issues I faced - 

A) Publisher Unknown.  I wanted to sync my files, but was informed that a new update was essential and forced me down the update route. My W10 laptop said that the publisher was "unknown" which was a very poor start. However, I continued.

B) Folders that I previously selected to back up were forgotten. Once the update was complete, the update seemed to have 'lost' the settings I already had about which folders I had chosen to back up. I had to set them up manually again from Settings.

C) Different folder path now being used.  The previous folder path was as it still is in the Cloud. That is you went through the Documents folder to get to those subfolders in Documents being backed up. This update makes you select the subfolders without reference to them being in Documents. However, I notice that they still interact and backup to the Cloud properly in spite of this.

C) BT Sync Folder duplicated. My laptop then seemed to go mad, with old files I already had in my laptop being downloaded from the Cloud to the laptop. W10 Task Manager reported massive use of resources. I pressed 'Pause' and investigated. I found that a second BT Sync folder was being created, replicating the existing 2014 one which was still there. I therefore disabled the Sync Folder in BT Cloud for the time being.

D) Settings for Sync Folder not working properly. Once I had got my own files backed up, I then enabled the Sync Folder again, even though things were being duplicated (as there was less that 100Mb there in my case).
I noticed that the 2nd choice of "Make only the following folders available on this computer" does not work. If you press Save, it does not actually save. When this sync was completed, I have ended up with two identical folders, one from 2014 and this brand new one.

[Cicero]

Fellow subscribers I note all your comments which are very similar to my thoughts.

I too worked in IT for nearly 40 years. Had we unleashed such a disaster on our customers then heads would have rolled and customers may well have cancelled contracts.

The implementation defies all the sound rules of implementing an IT project, the primary one that of customer contact and information, and others relating to TESTING and RECOVERY.

This  product version BT Cloud has never equalled the sophistication of the F-Secure product it replaced. 

The current "platform" has taken years of modification and adaptation to get anywhere near functional begging some serious questions as to how it was chosen in the first place.

It took several years to get it to produce Albums (Folders).

I only use it as a last resort and certainly not a primary backup/recovery source. 

The attitude of we will fix any more errors on the fly as it were, is unacceptable.

We are in the 21st Century yet it seems the lessons of IT implementation learnt the hard way in the 20th Century have been forgotten.

[Mitchinsong]

I used to have a BT Cloud folder in my File Explorer, which has now disappeared without any way of getting it back!

Also, frankly the BT Cloud website that stores pictures, documents, etc is a heap of **bleep**. It just seems like a massive bucket with a huge number of duplicates! and it takes forever to search through even with a high speed broadband.

The only real use I have found with it was having the my BT Cloud directory structure in my File Explorer, now that's disappeared!

When you design these things, do you just throw away the rule book and the ideas of directories and just shove it all into a massive bucket and leave the poor user to try and search through it all?  Feels like the 1980s again where no one really understood computing!

[PeteHr]

All, before I waste any more time on this. Luckily, my main backup is to my NAS and I only keep a subset of that in the BT Cloud so I have  off-site backup for those particular files. For now I've uninstalled the client to stop it starting after a reboot and presenting me with a login screen I can't even  enter my credentials into !

So I (thankfully) havnt' been hit one of these horrible sync issues etc which look to be really nasty because I don't get that far !.

As I said in my previous post in my case my PC died and I ended up replacing it and after much grief one of the final steps in restoring normality was to put BT Cloud on the new PC (which of course is the new version) - and when launched it just presents me with a blank window - which when expanded out has a login screen but it's not possible to even enter the login/password.

Has anyone else installed this "update"  on a new/re-installed PC rather than installed the update on a working machine thus replacing the old (working) client (which presumably has your credentials cached)?   Does anyone know if this particular issue is on the list of horrors to hopefully be addressed in the drop next week ??

[SlowRob]

I have nearly 240GB of files stored in what should be 1,000 GB of BT Cloud but, on my Windows PC I now get warnings every few minutes that my allowance is full. My Android devices cope and connect faultlessly.

[JTS1]

Neil, I am pleased to say that the BT Cloud (for me anyway) appears to be functioning as it was before the introduction of Version 20.6.1.
The only thing that I have to add is that it would benefit hugely, if there was a User Guide on how to use it's functions more efficiently.

Thank you for the information that you provided, you have restored my faith in humanity.

I hope you have a good Christmas and a Happy New Year.

[opalset11]

The issue for me is that cloud starts and  then just closes down.   So app runs for bout 1 min before shutting itself down.   I have checked services and its not running.  I turned off webroot etc and get same problem so its not protection interfering with it.   Hope you fix this asap

[abbersbolton]

I too am not sure why the perfectly functional app, even if it was quite out of date, was replaced with what is an untested beta version. There is a perfectly good BT trials community that could have tested this first! 

Anyway, my issue is that one one computer the sync is totally ignoring the changes in settings made and is still trying to sync really large files I didn't want it to download. 
Then on my other laptop it's saying Account FULL! when hovering over the system tray icon, and a red Error cloud icon shows up on the popup and NaN% of 0b used in the quota section. It doesn't sync my folder changes. 

So annoying as I was in the process up backing up files for a PC reset. This should not be happening to an important software service like this, regardless of whether it's free with BT broadband or paid for.  

[Cicero]

Had a quick look and things seem to functioning however where my videos are is a mystery. All folders with JPEG’s and videos in are missing the video. Where the folder I uploaded yesterday when who knows.

Folders I thought I had deleted seem to have reappeared but I my be wrong.

As I previously said I don’t rely on BT Cloud anyway.