Creating site from backups (Google Drive) not working

Support
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Hey @warrengroom,

Thanks for your patience and willingness to help!

I took another look at the logs you shared and I’m noticing something interesting.

In addition to the UtimesNano warnings I mentioned earlier, there’s a second error that appears about 11 seconds after the first attempt. On that second retry, the error changes completely - instead of UtimesNano (can’t set timestamps), it’s now CreateFile: Access is denied, which means Local can’t even access the directories anymore.

This pattern suggests something is locking the entire directory between the two retry attempts. My guess is this is related to Windows Defender Real-Time Protection - when Local restores about many files quickly (looking at the logs, about 5000 files of a modern WordPress install with a few plugins), it might trigger Defender to scan them, which could lock the directories.

I’m having trouble replicating this on my end because my Windows VM uses CrowdStrike from WP Engine’s IT department instead of the default Windows Defender, so I’m going to need your help to confirm what’s happening.

The question is: what’s running on your system that would cause the timestamp warnings on attempt 1, then lock the entire directory structure 11 seconds later?

Can you help me confirm a few things?

  1. Windows Security settings: I’d love to know what kind of settings you have in Windows Security → Virus & threat protection. If you’re comfortable, can you take a screenshot of that screen, or at the very least let me know which specific options are enabled (Real-time protection, Cloud-delivered protection, etc.)?

  2. During the next restore attempt, can you open Task Manager → Details tab and watch what’s using CPU/disk during that ~30 second window when it fails? Specifically, is “Antimalware Service Executable” (MsMpEng.exe) active?

  3. This is a long shot, but when you originally created the backup, was Local launched as Administrator (Right-click Local → Run as Administrator)? And when restoring, are you running it as a normal user or as Administrator?

  4. For the Windows Defender exclusions you’ve already added - did you add just the temp folder, or did you also add C:\Users\warre\Local Sites?

  5. One diagnostic test that would help: create a brand new, minimal WordPress site in Local (default theme, no plugins), back it up to Google Drive, then try restoring that small backup. Does it succeed or fail with the same errors? This would tell us if it’s related to the backup size or something specific about the original site.

Based on what you find, we can figure out the right exclusions to add or whether we need to look into a permission issue with how the backup was created. When you have those answers, can you also provide an updated version of the Local logs by navigating to the Support tab in Local and clicking Download Logs?

Let me know what you discover!