SecCopy has stopped working

I've been using Centered Systems Second Copy 2000 to manage the backups on my home network, and to an offsite server, for years. For the offsite backups I use the "autodial" feature in Second Copy, that configures a profile to "dial" a connection, such as a VPN connection.

I recently upgraded to Windows 7 from Windows XP, and when I ran my profiles, Second Copy crashed with the message "SecCopy has stopped working".

After some experimentation I narrowed this down to the profile that was using the autodial feature. If I disabled the autodial, and connected to the network manually from outside of Second Copy, then the profile would run fine. I sent a message to Centered Systems support, but didn't get (or missed) the reply. I bought a license to Second Copy 7.1 hoping that this addressed any Windows 7 compatibility issues. But I got exactly the same problem there.

I am now successfully using the following workaround. Instead of using the autodial feature, I am using the run programs feature. This lets you specify a command line to be executed before or after running the profile. I am using the rasdial command line to connect to the network.

rasdial vpnnetwork userid password

This connects to the network called "vpnnetwork" with the userid and password specified. You can also disconnect using

rasdial vpnnetwork /disconnect

Credit to Jon Galloway's article on "Easier VPN Connections from a Windows Desktop" for the command line parameters.