The job failed with the following error: A failure occurred querying the Writer status.

[Adam_Ball]

Hi all,

We have a daily backup that we run Monday - Friday that is used to back up Exchange. However, fails randomly (a lot!) with the error: "The job failed with the following error: A failure occurred querying the Writer status."  on the VSS Writer. We also run a daily system backup 1 hour after exchange job finishes - which runs sucessfully.

We have tried rebooting the server and setting a pre-command to restart the service before the backup starts.

I have had a look through the internet and have had no success.

BE is running on SBS 2008 Server with BE being v2010

Any ideas on how to resolve this?

Thanks

[CraigV]

Hi Adam,

Reregister the VSS *.dlls and see if this fixes the issue. No need to restart the server. You can check the TN below:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH70486

If the server in question if Windows Server 2003, do a search on Google for Windows Server 2003 VSS Rollup patch. Download the latest and install it. Then try the backup again!

Thanks!

[Adam_Ball]

Hi Craig,

Thanks for your reply.

I have done this, however, on the system state backup part, the job fails as it can not find the writer...

Any ideas?

[CraigV]

...and if you run: vssadmin list writers from a command prompt, do you see any of them in Failed/Retrying status?

Also, what is the OS? If Windows Server 2003, you can download a Windows Server 2003 VSS Rollup Patch and install that on your server in question.

Thanks!

[Adam_Ball]

I did the vssadmin list writers and they all returned with no errors and stable.

Its Server 2008...

Any further ideas?

Thanks

[marcusolini]

Hi. VSS Writer failures are notoriously difficult to diagnose and resolve.  When able, please provide the exact version and service pack level for the Windows 2008 system and Exchange Server to better assist.  Thank you.

[Carlos_Quiroga]

Check the scheduled online maintenance for your Exchange mailboxes and see if that does not overlap with your backup job.

Check the Windows Event Viewer Application Log to see when maintenance starts, finishes, and what tasks it is performing. Online maintenance includes 11 tasks, of which defragmentation, the one that causes the most trouble, is the 11th.

Also,, if you can campact and repair the mailbox databases with ESEUTIL and run ISINTEG to checlk for consistency.

Regards,

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

Adam: here is a TN to check out:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH179220

...and I take it that your media server is also fully patched? And that these patches have been push-installed to the remote servers you might have?

[Adam_Ball]

Case closed.

Thanks....

[CraigV]

Sorry Adam, case closed how? Can you mark the thread that helped? Or if you worked it out yourself, can you please include the details?