VSS Writer Fails

[guest]

We are using Server 2008 Standard 64 bit.


Any time we try to back up to a local disk, USB disk or external share it fails, upon further investigation it says the VSS writer has failed.


We uninstalled and reinstalled the backup add on but it did not fix the problem.


I checked services and Volume Shadow service is running, does anyone have any ideas why this is happening?

[guest]

There were errors with the VSS writer, so I uninstalled backup and reinstalled backup, now it cant seem to find any errors, but when i try to do a backup it now says this:


Backup started at '5/12/2008 11:00:20 PM' failed as Volume Shadow copy operation failed for backup volumes with following error code '2155348129'. Please rerun backup once issue is resolved



Any ideas?

[guest]

Hello,



Would you please also try if this problem remains when you run "backup once" and exclude the system volume? And would please let me know if you have ever seen any other errors or warnings related to VSS or Writers in the Application event log? Please ensure you have the latest version of Windows Server 2008 (should be RTM edition).



Based on some further research, this error code '2155348129' may be caused by the incorrect Active volume.



Please open the Disk Management console, located at "Server Manager\Storage\Disk Management" and see which partition has been marked as Active volume. If the Active volume is different from the volume in which you install the operating system, try changing the Active volume to the volume containing the operating system by using the following commands:



1. Open a command prompt as Administrator.

2. Run diskpart.

3. At the diskpart> prompt type "list disk" (without quotations), see which disks are listed there

4. At the diskpart> prompt type "list volume", see which volume is the volume containing operating system

5. At the diskpart> prompt type "select disk 0" <enter>.

6. At the diskpart> prompt type "select volume 2" <enter> (I assume the volume 2 is the volume containing operating system).

7. At the diskpart> prompt type "active" <enter>.



Note that this is just for a test and may lead to unbootable of your computer. Change the Active volume back to the previous one after this test.



Additionally, if you are using any iSCSI drives, disable the teaming NICs and see if it can work.



Best regards,

Chang Yin

[guest]

Hi Chang Yin

I had the same problem as the previous poster and your suggestion about the Active volume (being the system drive C:) resolved the issue. Great! Thanks

[guest]

That was it, that is what the problem was.


I cant believe they actually released this OS to manufacturing with such a huge bug, i have had this on any new 2008 systems I have installed, 5 in total so far.


Thank you!

[guest]

We're having the exact same problem with Server 2008 Standard 64-bit. I cannot successfully complete any backups with Windows Server Backup in its default configuration.

Event Viewer also displays error code '2155348129' but our System parition is correctly marked as Active already.

However, If I disable SQL Server VSS Writer in services.msc, the Backup successfully completes. I decided to stop this service when I noticed that its entry in 'vssadmin list writers' was marked as 'non-retryable error'

Naturally, I would like any and all SQL databases to be backed up successfully too. Where do I go from here?

[guest]

I have problem with backup on windows server 2008 with SQL 2005 Express too. I am trying to find solutions from summer till now, but not found it. For backup I am use the same work around as TFK NZ, difference is that I am not waiting until backup is finished for starting SQL 2005 Express. The command for starting SQL 2005 Express runs after 5 minutes after backup is started. Backup work fine. This mean that delay for SQL Express is 5 minutes, but this is work around. If someone has solution for this issue, please, post it in this forum.

[guest]

I saw the same problem on a box that was running SQL and found that it is resolved with the hotfix:

934396 FIX: Error messages and an event may be logged when you use the Virtual Device Interface in SQL Server 2005 or in SQL Server 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -US;934396

I used the compat version of the fix as it looks like this is a backwords compatibility problem. Hope this helps someone else too.

[guest]

I had the same errors:
Volume Shadow Copy Service operation error (0x800423f0) the shadow-copy set only contains only a subset of the volumes needed to correctly backup the selected components of the writer.

and

Backup started at '<time> ' failed as Volume Shadow copy operation failed for backup folumes with following error code '2155348129'. Please rerun backup one issue is resolved.

In my case the issue was with a missing disk in disk manager. I had replaced the backup hard drive and assigned the old drive letter to the new drive, however after that the backup started to fail. I checked the disk manager and I saw the old volume and drive listed as missing. After I remove them, wbadmin started to work again.
The backup disk in both cases was set as Dynamic.

[guest]

"To fix this the only thing I found is to re-install sql server or at least the vss writer compnent. re-installing sql server fixed this backup issue for me. the server with backup issues is windows server 2008 64 bits , sql server 2005"

My previous post on this topic:

"here too we have the same issue, sql server vss writer is in "not retryable error" mode identified after "vssadmin list writer" command and backup fails unless sql server vss writer is turned off. this server used to backup successfully.

Writer name: 'SqlServerWriter'
Writer Id: {a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}
Writer Instance Id: {c0a8a0de-8d7a-4ba7-abe0-fe9a2af552c3}
State: [8] Failed
Last error: Non-retryable error

yes indeed MS is doging this big time (they probably dont know much about it; I bet the guy who knows is probably playing basket ball in redmond; hopefully they can find him).

It does not seem to be any administrative ways to reset/fix the state of this VSS writer successfully; not an exciting thought when it comes to business critical process such as system backup.

Turning off the sql server vss writer service works around this issue and let you backup your server but leaves you the system admin questioning if the sql server backup db on your server can be restored successfully: As i read it somewhere: "using the sql server vss writer is the only way to ensure all transactions are succesfully written to the vss volume and therefore the backup while sql server instances are running".

As some suggested when the vss writer for sql server is turned off as a work around, it is a good idea to stop the sql server DB instances so no-one can use them until backup is completed. Turning-off sql server instances may not be practical for all business; it would depends on service level agreement and service availibility requirements. I never had this issue with server 2003 and sql , obviously we had a myriad of other issues and they are probably still applicable to 2008 as when it comes to their core O/S dlls and application such as the ESE all have been around for 10 years+ and yes they all have the same potential for file corruption: ntfrs, ms exchange 200x, dhcp, dns, AD, sql server, etc or all of them at once. But the vss writer issue seems to be new to server 2008.

as Won Choi said: "This is simply unacceptable for a backup solution, especially considering this is a fully Microsoft solution."

so MS will you find that guy playing basket ball and tell him to give us a solution to this?

Hello Mister MS!! listen: Your backup on server 2008 is not only overwhemingly complicated in design, but it does not work either. Hello wake up!. Also I really start to get annoyed with all these dialog box that are supposed to show us the details of errors and events in the logs, they are all too small and cannot be resized. in 2008 some new ones even use a listview control and you can't even see a single line in the list. WTF. what are we chickens?

have a nice day!"

[guest]

I had the same problem but the only solution for me was to create this bat file .

Run FIXVSS.BAT to reset VSS configuration.
rem FILENAME: FIXVSS03.BAT
rem
net stop "System Event Notification"
net stop "COM+ Event System"
net stop "Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider "
net stop "Volume Shadow Copy"
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
Cd /d %systemroot%\syswow64
regsvr32 /s ole32.dll
regsvr32 /s vss_ps.dll
regsvr32 /s es.dll
regsvr32 /s stdprov.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml3.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml4.dll
net start "COM+ Event System"

After everything was done right .

[guest]

Try running the SharePoint configuration wizard again. I know that there is nothing in the logs to indicate that this is the issue, but I spent a lot of time with the same problem and finally fixed it by allowing SharePoint to upgrade after an update sent down by MS. After the Wizard completes, the backup starts working.

[guest]

I am trying to do a SystemState backup on a DC that also has Arcserve 12.5 installed with SQL Express 2005. I get the error:

Backup started at '5/09/2011 9:30:07 AM' failed as Volume Shadow copy operation failed for backup volumes with following error code '2155348129'. Please rerun backup once issue is resolved..

After much trolling through Google and many different suggestions I decided to stop the SQL service, run the backup then restart the service. I created the following CMD script that helped resolve the issue.

SC QUERY MSSQL$ARCSERVE_DB | find "MSSQL$ARCSERVE_DB"
if ERRORLEVEL 1 Goto RUNBACKUP
:SQLEXISTS
Echo MSSQL$ARCSERVE_DB Exists
SC STOP MSSQL$ARCSERVE_DB
:: Wait a few seconds before proceeding

@ping 127.0.0.1 -n 2 -w 1000 > nul
@ping 127.0.0.1 -n %1% -w 1000> nul
:RUNBACKUP
wbadmin delete systemstatebackup -keepVersions:2 -quiet
wbadmin start systemstatebackup -backupTarget:D: -quiet
SC QUERY MSSQL$ARCSERVE_DB | find "MSSQL$ARCSERVE_DB"
if ERRORLEVEL 1 Goto END
Echo MSSQL$ARCSERVE_DB Exists
SC START MSSQL$ARCSERVE_DB
:: Wait a few seconds before proceeding

@ping 127.0.0.1 -n 2 -w 1000 > nul
@ping 127.0.0.1 -n %1% -w 1000> nul
:END
Exit




Hope this helps others have a similar issue.

[guest]

I don't know if anyone is still having this issue. But I was having it on a SBS 2011 evrytime I ran a backup. It was obviously a VSS error, but unclear what writer was causing the issue. Ends up a SPsearch error in my event log, which a Microsoft article said can be ignored, was the cause of the whole backup failure.

SOLUTION

I ran the Sharepoint 2010 Configuration Wizard from Start>All Programs>Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products> Product config. wizard. Go thru the upgrade/update (do not change any server info, you're just updating the software- note your SP site will be down durin the upgrade about 15 minutes). Finish the wizard, close SP Foundation, and try to run the Windows Backup again. Mine worked perfectly. after the upgrade

[guest]

I have been struggling with this issue for the last 2 weeks and a lot of documentation on the internet pointed towards a disk parition problem, however the event log showed that it was a VSS problem. All I can say is never under estimate the value of the event log in diagnostics!!



My solution to my back up problem which was a VSS Writer problem was as you said run Sharepoint 2010 config and after that it worked fine, so to anyone using SBS and having this problem and you haven't done the Sharepoint config, DO IT! Will hopefully save you a lot of time and money!! (I lost many drinking hours to this server!)