tell him to put the db in simple recovery.

let it grow as needed for the initial load of the database then shrink it back down once done.

check your sql server error logs and windows event logs. if a backup fails it will be logged to these places.

if nothing shows there then I would come in...

In your profile trace you should have a hostname column. If not, you will need to add it and rerun your trace. Once you determine the host, you...

I believe it's the windows processid at the host. Sysinternals has a process viewer where you should be able pinpoint exactly what PID that is.