I'm running Vista on two machines, one's a laptop and the other one is a desktop.
Since getting the laptop, I've barely used my desktop so I've been converting it into a media server.

But I wouldn't want to lose my precious laptop's OS, so I've been trying to backup my whole laptop to my desktop's capacious drive using the vista complete backup tool.
I've been messing round with “C:\Windows\System32\wbadmin.exe Start backup -allcritical -backupTarget:X: -quiet”, “X” being the mapped drive on my desktop, but to no success because I get an error message saying “The backup destination is a shared folder mapped to a drive letter”.

So, does anyone know a way to bypass this to get my laptop to backup over the network to my desktop's backup drive?

Any help or advice welcome

I'm not sure how much space you have on the old computer and can't help with what you are trying to do.

I can offer what I did to keep my laptop backed up.

Get an inexpensive external Hard Drive. I picked up a 250 Gig Seagate for under $70 on sale.

It is SO easy to use this device for backup and restore of the back up files with the Microsoft Backup Tool.

Sorry couldn't be of more help with your specific situation.

Thanks but I want to use the 500GB+ drive I got in my desktop, might get an external enclosure

With Windows Vista, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools and select the Backup Status and Configuration.

The wizard will walk you through a backup and a network location can be used as well as local disks, CD/DVD's and removable media.

You can not backup to the same disk that is being backed up. If the share is located on the same disk, you can not use that either.

Erm thanks but that's no help, I want to run a complete PC backup, not just files

Get Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost and create an image of the drive to your network share.

OK, thanks, I'll have a look