Stephen
When you try to use NTBackup with Windows Server 2003 it fails stating that the operation did not successfully complete showing error: Error returned while creating the volume shadow copy:0xffffffff. This issue occures when the VSS system files are not registered.
The workaround on this issue is to re-register VSS system files.
Create a batch file with the following:
cd /d %windir%\system32
Net stop vss
Net stop swprv
regsvr32 ole32.dll
regsvr32 oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 vss_ps.dll
vssvc /register
regsvr32 /i swprv.dll
regsvr32 /i eventcls.dll
regsvr32 es.dll
regsvr32 stdprov.dll
regsvr32 vssui.dll
regsvr32 msxml.dll
regsvr32 msxml3.dll
regsvr32 msxml4.dll
Execute the batch file to allow re-registration of vss system files and try to run the ntbackup again.
You can use vssadmin to list writers:
vssadmin list writers
February 9, 2009
Excellent!
There were a few errors running those steps, but afterwards my W2K3 Server backups started working.
Thanks!
Pv
[Reply]
February 12, 2009
I am glad it worked out fine as those steps are reproduced many times without problem.
Also in some cases the backup fails if you upgrade to SP2 without install SP1 first. So its very advisable that you first install SP1 and then SP2 as lot of thinks can get wrong.
Regards,
Glafkos
[Reply]