VSS Snapshot errors

[TB-]

I'm looking for ideas here, we are running BE12.5 on x64 2003SP2 server. Up until last week our jobs completed (with exceptions), on Thurs night we had a power outage and the server rebooted, the job that night obviously failed. Since that night all jobs are now failing with :
Final error: 0x80042308 - 0x80042308 (2147754760) 
AOFO: Initialization failure on: "Shadow?Copy?Components". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).
VSS Snapshot error. The volume or snapped volume may not be available or may not exist. Check the configuration of the snapshot provider, and then run the job again.
The following volumes are dependent on resource: "C:"

All drives are online and healthy, regular files are being backed up normally it just appears to be the VSS that is failing. The event log has no warnings other than 'job failed'

Addition, what i've just spotted in the log is "The following volumes are dependent on resource: "C:" "C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\{D7F7ADFD-8641-11DD-9EF1-001EC9D6DC9B}\""
This identifies itself as a mounted volume that I cannot access, i'll look into this more but any help would be appreciated. 

[RahulG]

Enable the shadow copies for the C drive if disable. Make sure have all the vss update installed 
: A Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) update package is available for Windows Server 2003 as per "http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833167/en-us"

: Apply HF as per "http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826936/en-us"
refer the following document as well
http://support.veritas.com/docs/301495

 Make sure the NTbackup can backup the server fine

[RahulG]

http://support.veritas.com/docs/307863

[Dev_T · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Install the VSS rollup patch http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940349 (Reboot required) on the problem server and perform backups...

[Dev_T]

Any news here?

[Khue]

At what point in the process are the jobs failing? Are they failing right away or are they doing some work and then failing out? Have you checked the status of the VSS providers on the servers that you are backing up (vssadmin list writers, vssadmin list providers)?

I run into a rare instance when the VSS providers end up fubaring on a server that I am in the process of backing up and I believe I get a similar issue. The only fix is to reboot the server. From a command line type "vssadmin list writers" and verify that the state of the writers, if there is currently no backup taking place, is [1] Stable and that Last error is "no error." If anything is different then that, when no backups are taking place, reboot the server and see if the state changes. All this should be done on the servers that you are backing up, not on the 12.5 server itself. 

[TB-]

Sorry for the delay in replying, I have the VSS patch ready to install but unfortunately I had already missed last weeks patch window so I was waiting for this weeks one to apply it (tomorrow night).

All of my VSS writers are showing no error, i'd already checked that. This is a stand alone branch machine so any problem is local.

Now the interesting part, on Friday night the full backup ran and the System State/Shadow Copy Components are reporting they backed up properly. Additionally where I had initialisation errors on C,D & E drives previously I now only have errors on the C drive.

I think it's best to apply the hotfix anyway but I am at a loss as to why these components would start working again (I have checked and my incremental jobs have the same basic settings as my full job).

Thank you for the pointers so far.

[TB-]

Final update, the VSS rollup patch and a reboot appears to have cleared my error. I still have no idea why it started to fail after working for so long which doesn't sit well, but thank you all for your help.