Damin,
Glad to hear you were able to get it working. For everyone else that is using a tape drive, I would we start by breaking it down to see if the problem revolves around BEWS not being able to do any type of backup at all, or just in relation to tape drives. Please perform the following:
1. First of all, make sure all Backup Exec services are started.
2. On the backup server, check Event Viewer to see if any port 10000 errors are occurring. If so, make sure this port is open for communication between it and the remote server (if applicable).
3. Create a backup to disk folder inside Backup Exec on the backup server, and do a small test job to itself using that newly created backup to disk folder as the device. This will eliminate the tape drive from the equation.
4. If it succeeds, then we can continue on with troubleshooting the tape drive issue. If not, try changing the remote agent service on the server to run as the Backup Exec service account and not as the local system account, and reattempt the backup.
5. If the tape drive continues to be the issue, shut down all Backup Exec services, and open up ntbackup (the Windows backup utility). Attempt backups to the drive from there.
6. If successful, we no know it's the communication between the drive and Backup Exec. If not, I would speculate there is an issue with the connection of the drive or the configuration and would recommend running through the following technote:
http://support.veritas.com/docs/192216
7. If ntbackup worked, then perform the following:
--Run the c:\program files\symantec\Backup Exec\tapeinst.exe utility and choose to "uninstall and remove all Symantec device drivers for all devices on your system."
--Shutdown the server, shutdown the drive/loader. Boot up the loader/drive. when it's not blinking or moving anymore, bootup the server.
--Run the c:\program files\symantec\Backup Exec\tapeinst.exe utility again, and choose to "use symantec tape drivers for all supported tape devices."
--Shutdown the server, shutdown the drive/loader. Boot up the loader/drive. when it's not blinking or moving anymore, bootup the server.
--Reattempt a backup.
Please let us know if this resolves your issue, and if not, what errors are you receiving at this point.
Thanks.
Backup Exec for Windows Servers Free E-mail Support
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/email_forms/intro_emailsup.asp