Hello all,

I’ve been struggling with one of the many VSS related problems during a backup operation on a 2008 R2 server from a third party software (it doesn't matter which one for the purpose of this).
I’ve already tried almost 99% of suggestions out there without getting a real solution so I dug down deep with vsstrace.exe and found out what’s happening:

…
[21:19:17.873 P:1BC8 T:2084 SECSECRC(1756)      GEN] ENTER[CVssSidCollection::IsSidAllowedToFire]
[21:19:17.873 P:1BC8 T:2084 SECSECRC(1882)      GEN] ExpandForVerification()
[21:20:11.576 P:1BC8 T:22B0 INCWRMPH(0875)   WRITER] ENTER[CVssWriterImpl::Lock]
[21:20:11.576 P:1BC8 T:22B0 INCWRMPH(0875)   WRITER] EXIT[CVssWriterImpl::Lock] Time spent: 00:00:00-0000; total: 0; HRESULT: 0
[21:20:11.576 P:1BC8 T:22B0 WRTWRTIC(2226)   WRITER] Aborting due to timeout
…

Look at timestamps: the “ExpandForVerification” is freezing (21:19), so all the VSS writer timers (that where started before) reach the 60 sec. timeout (21:20) and the whole backup is aborted. The Application Log gets populated with SQLVDI and MSSQLSERVER errors, but those are the consequence, not the cause, I didn’t get any useful information about them.

Now there are (random) days when all runs well and the backup completes successfully. In such cases all ExpandForVerification operations are IMMEDIATELY (milliseconds) followed by other operations, all runs smoothly without time gaps and that should be the normal behavior.

Unfortunately I could not find any documentation about these entries so my question is: what “SECSECRC” stand for? What’s happening during the ExpandForVerification event? What could freeze it? There’s a sort of “black hole” in the log where I have no informations about what’s happening.

Any suggestions or documentation references?
As per this it seems quite similar to my situation, but the hotfix is not available (no more available) for Server 2008, is there a mirror elsewhere? did someone tested it?

Thanks!

Log Name:      Directory Service

Source:       Microsoft-Windows-ActiveDirectory_DomainService

Event ID: 2089

Description:

This directory partition has not been backed up since at least the following number of days.

 Directory partition: DC=server,DC=local

 'Backup latency interval' (days): 90

==================================================================

Since we have an old external tape backup drive on another server, data is copied to this file from the above server through robcopy every night.

To fix above issue, we need to do systemstatebackup for all DC. Right?

If we do schedule job "wbadmin start systemstatebackup -backuptarget:d -quiet" everyday, I've the following questions.

Q1: Can D:\WindowsImageBackup be rocopy to anohter drive for backup (eg. external HDD or tape)? Is it safe?

Q2: Running "wbadmin start systemstatebackup -backuptarget:d -quiet" needs around 2 hours first time. How to set it to backup as differential or incremental backup?

Q3: Since we have another robcopy data backup on daily time, can we run systemstatebackup every Sunday only?

Q4: Is it recommend to run systemstatebackup for all DC separately?

Please advise.

Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Backup fails when tried to take System Image, Bare Metal Recovery backup using Windows Server Backup tool. I am trying to save the backup to a network shared folder. The Volume Shadow Copy and Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider services are set to Manual.

The error message : The backup operation failed because the Volume Shadow Copy Service operation to create a shadow copy of the volumes being backed up failed with following error code '0x80780021'. Please review the event details for a solution and then rerun the backup.

So far, I have tried the following:

1. Set the Shadow copy to use Maximum size as No Limit. (on both local C: drive and shared drive)

2. Ran chkdsk C: /f -  and found no errors

3. vssadmin list writers -  lists all the writers as No Error

4. Created 2 REG_DWORD entries in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SPP

      CreateTimeout -  1200000  (decimal)

      IdleTimeout - 1200000 (decimal)

Please let me know if I need to do anything else to resolve this issue. Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

I am wondering if anyone else has seen the below error message? If so how do I correct it, I don't want to have to purchase a 3rd party backup software package to backup the entire server if possible....

Below is the hard drive formats...not sure why OS partition is Fat32..I did not load the OS on this server.

Below is the error I get when trying to run any backups using the windows server backup configuration wizard?

Any ideas on how to correct this without a reinstallation would be great :)

Mark D. Albin IT Master Services www.itmasterservice.com (775) 229-4254

I'm running Windows Server 2012, with my "C" drive on a small, 60 GB  SSD and a large, 3 TB drive as my "D" drive, with two VMs on "D" (only one VM runs, the other's turned off all the time).  In the past I've had no problem using Windows Server Backup to do an initial Full backup of all drives, with scheduled daily incremental backups, to another 3 TB HDD.  However, recently I formatted the backup 3 TB drive and started over (dumb thing to do).  After the initial, full backup (System Reserved, Bare Metal Recovery, C, D, Hyper-V, Virtual Machines), all subsequent backups do System Reserved and Local C as incremental, but the large "D" drive, 3 TB HDD (with about 2 TB of data on it) is always done as Full, and it takes six hours.  It used to do "D" as incremental and would take a few minutes, depending on how much data changed that day.

I have tried configuring Performance Settings to Fast, which is supposed to backup changes only, yet each night a full backup of "D" is made.  I've also tried configuring Performance Settings as Custom, and forcing each drive to be Incremental in the drop-down box next to each drive, but it makes no difference:  "D" is always a full backup.  The time taken isn't the biggest problem -- the biggest problem is that I have no backup history.  A file deleted yesterday is gone for good without incremental backups.

Does anyone have any idea why Windows Server Backup will not backup my 3 TB "D" drive (with 2 TB of data) incrementally?  I used to be able to hold over a dozen backup copies before, now all I get is yesterday's data.

Mike B.

Hi,

We have four Active Directory VMs in the environment. To schedule AD backup to backup system state etc via Windows Server Backup, it is per AD VM backup, not per domain, is this correct?

Thank you

Hi, 

Since some time now i have not been able to use the Windows server backup tool anymore.

I cant really tell since when this started, but for all i know the windows server backup service worked fine.

I even created a backup schedule and it made some backups. 

I am running this windows server 2012 Standard at home with just a couple of basic applications.

The server is used to host several websites with IIS, it manages my local DHCP and is used for locally shared storage.

There are no other security applications installed yet, because i am trieing to get rid of this error first. (so no symantec or whatever)

Since some time i am having trouble opening the windows backup snap-in. 

When ever i trie to open the Windows server backup snap-in i get the following error:

A fatal error occurred during a Windows Server Backup snap-in (Wbadmin.msc) operation.

Error details: The Windows Server Backup service has stopped. 

Close Wbadmin.msc and then restart it.

Whenever this error occures the folowing error is show in the windows logbook:

I tried to find simmilar cases over the internet but i cant seem to find a solution for the problem. 

I already tried to remove and reinstall the Windows server backup feature, this did not help. 

Is there anyone here that can help me find a solution for this problem ?

Thank you !

Best Regards Maikel

Hi,

I am tring to restore a Server 2008 R2 Standard Ed (full installation) RTM to a virtual machine, from a full Windows Server Backup image taken of a physical machine (Dell PE 2970).  All restores fine, and looks good until it tries to boot, when a Stop Error occurs, with the following error:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xFFFFF880009A9928, 0xFFFFFFFFC0000034, 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000)

I believe the non-bracketed portion means "INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE".

There is only the System Reserved volume + a C: volume (system volume) + F: volume (DVD drive) on the original server.  It has had other volumes in it before, which are correctly listed in the MountedDevices registry key, but they have not been physically present for a while.

The virtual disk I'm trying to restore to is several GBs larger than the original virtual disk on the RAID controller (2 disks in RAID 1).

I can't figure out why the server isn't booting.  I've successfully restored Server 2008 machines from physical machines to VMs before, including servers using hardware RAID cards (e.g. Dell SAS 6/iR).  The only difference I can think of is that this is Server 2008 R2, this is a 2 proc server (I've tried several virtual proc numbers on the VM to no avail), and the RAID controller is PERC 6/i, and this is the first server I've tried with that particular RAID card.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if it's to point out that I'm looking in the wrong direction.

Many thanks,

Chris

Hi,

In case when the application crashes after creating a volume shadow copy . We might not have the Object to call BackupComplete() and SetBackupSucceeded().

I found that we can use CVssWriter::OnBackupShutdown method . In case of an application crash this gets invoked with snapshot ID as arguement .But still have no idea how call backupComplete() and SetBackupSucceeded( using the Snapshot set ID

I need to know if there is a way to call backupComplete() / SetBackupSucceeded() with the Snapshot Set ID I have

In real time this might be a big problem leaving my Vms to be in backing up mode in case the application is killed abruptly

(Any C++ Snippet example would be of great use)

Thanks

Hi,

My mother has a system of Windows 10. She wanted to update the system without internet. Is it possible? Suggestions are welcomed.

Hi

SBS 2011.

Using Windows backup, when I try to restore some files I get below error on all drives.

Unable to browse XXXXX. The shadow copy of the backup stored on the backup destination cannot be found

What can I do to fix this and be able to restore my files?

Thanks

Regards

Restored  the user's files from a Win 7 computer made with Backup & Restore tool to a new Windows 10 computer using same tool. Attempting to open any yields a "you do not have permission" error. The username on the old system was "User" and on the new system she is "Louise".

We did not recreate the user called "User" on the new system; we restored alongside her "Louise" folder and will drag/drop them into the respective folders under her name.

Is it safe to do recursive takeown operation on all except the AppData folder ?
The AppData I imagine should not be overwritten, but pick and choose what may need to be moved?

Hello,

I am working with a client and we are running into issues backing up the Windows Server 2008 System State.

We are running DPM 2007 SP1. We have Windows Server Backup installed on the Server 2008 system, and what we are seeing is that in DPM the System State Backup of the server, the status of the Protection State is "Replica is inconsistent".

The alert in DPM reads the following

Affected area: Computer\SystemState
Occurred since: 3/3/2009 5:31:19 PM
Description: The replica of System State Computer\SystemState on <servername> is inconsistent with the protected data source. All protection activities for data source will fail until the replica is synchronized with consistency check. You can recover data from existing recovery points, but new recovery points cannot be created until the replica is consistent (ID 3106)
 DPM failed to create the system state backup. If you are trying to create the system state of a Windows 2008 Server operating system, verify that the Windows Server Backup (WSB) is installed, and that there is enough free disk space on the protected server to store the system state. (ID 30214 Details: Internal error code: 0x809909FB)

WSB is installed on the protected system and it has plenty of space.

When I look at the logs on the Server 2008 system, I see the following errors:

Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-Backup
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Backup
Date:          3/3/2009 5:11:30 PM
Event ID:      5
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:     
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      <servername>
Description:
Backup started at '3/3/2009 4:11:26 PM' failed with following error code '2155348226'.

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-CAPI2
Date:          3/3/2009 8:46:23 PM
Event ID:      513
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      <servername>
Description:
Cryptographic Services failed while processing the OnIdentity() call in the System Writer Object.
Details:
AddCoreCsiFiles : BeginFileEnumeration() failed.
System Error:
Access is denied.

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Backup
Date:          3/3/2009 5:12:58 PM
Event ID:      517
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:     
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      <servername>
Description:
Backup started at '3/3/2009 4:12:55 PM' failed with following error code '2155348226' (System writer is not found in the backup.). Please rerun backup once issue is resolved.


I followed the instructions of the following article to make sure that the COM permissions are correct.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc734021.aspx

Everything is correct, except that when I look at the List of Writers (vssadmin list writers), I do not see the "System Writer" which is what WSB/DPM 2007 is trying to use in the System State Backup.

My question then is, how do I add the System Writer into the subscriber list for VSS?

We are using DPM 2012 to protect several servers.  Periodically (one to two times per week), VSS writers will get in a failed state.  Rebooting the server always clears up the issues but it seems to me that there should be a way to restart services or processes to re-initialize the writers.  For example, when the SQL Server writer is in a failed state, you simply restart the SQL Server VSS Writer service and the issue is fixed most times.  Rebooting production servers two to three times per week just to clear up VSS issues doesn't make sense.  The ones I can't figure out how to fix without a reboot are these:

1. NPS VSS Writer
2. IIS Config Writer (IIS is not currently installed and iisreset doesn't fix it)

All the other writers are pretty easy to figure out, although I'm not sure why "System Writer" is really the Cryptographic service.

Anyone provide some clarification on what service to restart to clear up these VSS writers?

Rob

I have a backup that is failing to backup the System State on a 2016 server, we have identified that the System Writer is missing by running VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS. We have been through the articles that reregister the writers, set permissions on various folders:

First

cd /d %windir%\system32
net stop vss
net stop swprv
regsvr32 /s ole32.dll
regsvr32 /s oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 /s vss_ps.dll
vssvc /register
regsvr32 /s /i swprv.dll
regsvr32 /s /i eventcls.dll
regsvr32 /s es.dll
regsvr32 /s stdprov.dll
regsvr32 /s vssui.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml3.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml4.dll
vssvc /register
net start swprv
net start vss

Second

Takeown /f %windir%\winsxs\temp\PendingRenames /a
icacls %windir%\winsxs\temp\PendingRenames /grant "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(RX)"
icacls %windir%\winsxs\temp\PendingRenames /grant "NT Service\trustedinstaller:(F)"
icacls %windir%\winsxs\temp\PendingRenames /grant BUILTIN\Users:(RX)
Takeown /f %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\* /a
icacls %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\*.* /grant "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(RX)"
icacls %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\*.* /grant "NT Service\trustedinstaller:(F)"
icacls %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\*.* /grant BUILTIN\Users:(RX)

net stop cryptsvc
net start cryptsvc

Using procmon I believe that we have narrowed it down to rights on the folder "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Temporary ASP.NET Files" as Procmon shows "Accessed Denied on "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Temporary ASP.NET Files\active". I have given "Network Service" full permissions on "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\Temporary ASP.NET Files" but still I get the access denied. Can anyone offer any suggestions on how to resolve this?

Background:

Been tasked with migrating some Hyper-V machines to VMWARE.

VMWARE converter dosn't support 2008 R2, however there is a nice guild http://sanbarrow.com/p2v2008r2.html#i2which explains one way to do it.

That guild didn't work for me as I as trying to restore Hyper-V IDE disks to VMWARE SCSI disks but was getting the same Bluescreen 7B issue. 

Before relasing this, I tried Server 2008 R2's Windows Server Backup, got the same errros, but once I worked out the drive discrepancy issues, I could do a backup to a network location, and then using a windows 7 x64 recovery disk I made do a bare metal restore to VMWARE by using System Image Recovery on a network drive. Was very happy with this :)

So far I've done this to two servers sucessfully.

Issue:

the method mentioned above is failing on one server, first I get the error:

"The system image restore failed.

Error details: The computer needs to be restarted to finish preparing a hard disk for restore. To continue, restart your computer and run the restore again. (0x80042403)"

Now If I try one of the other backups, it just starts restoring. If I restart as recommended I get the error:

"The System image restore failed.

No disk that can be used for recovering the system disk can be found."

it has a details option, that mentions USB drivers, DISKPART, etc, but none appear to be releviant.

Now I've tried backing up to different network locations, ensured that backups are sucessful on the server, trying larger virtual disks but same errors every time.

The server that is failing is Server 2008 R2, with SQL 2008, on a single disk (not best pratice, but this is just a POC box to run a small DB).

All 3 servers have been given identical configurations under Hyper-V and VMWARE.

Question:

So if it works for my other servers why won't it work for this one?

Is is something to do with SQL that's causing it to happen? (wouldn't think so).

Any suggestions on what else I could try?

I know I could just backup the databases and build a new one, but I'm liking this backup method, and if I wanted to use it under a full production senerio I'd like to know how to resolve the error should it arrise.

Hi,

I have installed the Windows Server Backup feature several times in Windows Server 2012, but the "Windows Server Backup UI" is missing under the "Administrative Tools" and under the \System32\wbadmin.msc .

Any ideas how to re-create or workaround this problem ?

I really appreciate your help !

With kind regards,

Cengiz Kuskaya