Create a login and password for backing up to network share

Symptoms

All 6 conditions below must be met:

1. Acronis True Image (any version) is installed on Windows 10 Enterprise or Education edition.
2. Windows version is 1709 or newer (Windows 10 Fall Creators Update or later).
3. Backup destination is a network share (NAS or any other kind of servers).
4. Network share is accessed through SMB2 network protocol.
5. Anonymous access to the share is allowed, meaning Windows uses a special "Guest" account to connect to the share.
6. Either of the following is true:
• You did not enter any credentials to access the share when the backup was set up
• The password for the NAS user account was changed, but not updated in Acronis True Image. Windows then kept falling back to the Guest account / anonymous access

In the above described setup backups will fail. Acronis True Image 2018 will display the following error:

The last backup has failed. Cannot open the backup

The full log, that can be obtained, for example, using the Log Viewer, will contain the message "This user can't sign in because this account is currently disabled"

Full error log: click to expand

Error 0xb03e9: Cannot open the backup.
line: 0x65e40aa0b486f4a
file: c:\bs_hudson\workspace\431\products\imager\archive\impl\operations\archive_operation_backup.cpp:185
function: TrueImage::Archive::BackupArchiveOperationImpl::DoPrepare
$module: ti_demon_vs_12510

error 0xb00eb: Network disconnected.
line: 0xd460020904af2928
file: c:\bs_hudson\workspace\431\products\imager\archive\impl\volume_location.cpp:143
function: TrueImage::Archive::VolumeLocation::OpenDir
$module: ti_demon_vs_12510

error 0x40015: Network disconnected.
line: 0xadf8677805d429e3
file: c:\bs_hudson\workspace\431\home\network\impl\network_impl.cpp:260
function: Network::ConvertToCommonError
$module: ti_demon_vs_12510

error 0xfff0: This user can't sign in because this account is currently disabled
line: 0xbd28fdbd64edb8f1
file: c:\bs_hudson\workspace\431\core\common\error.cpp:307
function: Common::Error::AddWindowsError
code: 0x80070533
$module: ti_demon_vs_12510

Cause

Guest access to SMB2 shares is disabled in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (version 1709) in Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions for security reasons. See this Windows support article

To check what edition and version of Windows 10 you have, follow the steps below:

1. Open Windows Start menu
2. Type About your PC
3. Press Enter on keyboard
4. Look under Windows specifications

Solution

Edit connection settings, provide credentials for any account on the NAS/server with a non-empty password.

To specify credentials for the network share in Acronis True Image, do one of the following:

1) click "Edit connection settings" in the error message in the product's GUI

2) click on the backup destination, select the NAS/server and press Edit credentials

Provide login and password and press Connect

Navigate to the folder where backups are saved, click on it to re-select it and click OK to save changes.

More information

See also Acronis True Image 2018: how to back up your computer or mobile device to NAS