I am trying to create a maintenance plan that will run automatically and back up my SQL Server 2005 databases automatically. I create a new maintenance plan and add a "Back Up Database Task", select all databases, and choose a path to back up to. When I save and try to execute this plan, I get the following error message:

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Execution failed. See the maintenance plan and SQL Server Agent job history logs for details.

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Job 'Backup.Subplan_1' failed. (SqlManagerUI)

------------------------------ Program Location:

at Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlManagerUI.MaintenancePlanMenu_Run.PerformActions()

I've checked the maintenance plan log, the agent log, and just about every log file I can find and there are no entries at all to help me figure out why this is failing.

If I right-click on a specific database and select "Back Up", the task succeeds. I tried changing the plan to back up just that one database and it still failed.

I've tried running the plan with both Windows authentication and SQL Server authentication with the sa account. I also tried specifically granting the SQL Server Agent user account full privileges on the backup folder, but it still failed.

While searching the web for clues, the only solution I've run across so far suggests running sp_configure 'allow_update', 0. I tried this but allow_update was already set to 0 and it did not fix the problem.

The Windows server and SQL Server have all updates applied to them.

Thanks for any suggestions!