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COM Surrogate Error

akertis
Level 3

We are testing out System Recovery 8 and we have a few users getting this error:

 

 COM Surrogate has encountered a problem and needs to close.

 

This error only happens with two people so far and happens right after the scheduled backup starts to run. 

 

Has anyone seen this or resolved this error?

 

Thanks!

57 REPLIES 57

Joerg_2
Level 3

The Symantec SymSnap VSS Provider shows "Status" as empty (not as "Started")

 

Moved all three to my administrator account. Restarted the services.

 

When I try to backup I get an error message:

-Fehler EBAB001A: An unknown exception has occurred at .\SmeCommon.cpp 548.

 

 

Will restart the computer and try again.

David_F
Level 6
Employee Accredited
Do we get this error if you logged in as the standard Windows Administrator account then the 2nd user account on this system? If you changed BESR's three services to use the standard Windows Administrator account instead of SYSTEM, rebooted, does that make a difference? 

Joerg_2
Level 3

Login as standard Windows Admínistrator didn't change anything.

 

If I change the three services to use the standard Windows Administrator account instead of System I do get the errror

Fehler EBAB001A: An unknown exception has occurred at .\SmeCommon.cpp 548 

 

If the three services use System I do get the COM Surrogate error.

 

 

David_F
Level 6
Employee Accredited
Going back to the services changing it back to using the Windows Administrator account, login using the Windows admin account again does changing the storage location (local vs. a network share or visa versa) make a difference? Does Windows disk management show any phantom drives that are no longer physically connected to the agent system and/or there drives reporting errors? Are there any iSCSI, SAN, NAS volumes connected to this system and/or are we backing up to such a storage location? Does Partinfo.exe (located in the Utilities sub-folder for the product) ran on this system reporting any errors on any volumes a backup job is scheduled for; does it show correctly when compared to the partitions listed in Windows Disk management?

 

Joerg_2
Level 3

Changing the storage location did not change anything. When the three services run on "Administrator" I get the same error EBAB001A. when they run on "System" I get the COM Surrogate.

 

No errors reported on the disks. No phantom drives. No iSCSI, SAN or NAS volumes.

 

Partinfo.exe does not report any errors, partitions are listed as in WDM.

 

I do run four local SATA hard drives. Two build a RAID system (mirror) (containing data) using an on board chip, one is for the operation system using a PCI-E SATA controller, one is just for excess data using an onboard SATA connector. All backups are made locally (Raid to OS harddisk and vice versa).

Message Edited by Joerg on 10-12-2008 02:08 AM

Johanvdv
Level 4

My symantec services were running as NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService. Changing them to local system did not resolve the issue.

 

Diskpart does not show anything wrong. There are no phantom drives visible. No iSCSI, SAN or NAS volumes.

 

When reviewing the DCOMCNFG, I can get to everything.

The users listed are only local administrators (no domain accounts).

 

I have not yet tried to re-register the Symantec SymSnap VSS Provider but this is still on my list of things to try.

 

On this system, the Symantec SymSnap VSS Provider (set to Automatic), stops after the DCOM error is raised.

TAPC
Level 3
Partner Accredited
Just removed Outlook 2007 business contact manager and the associated SQL installation from my XP Pro desktop. After removing using the uninstall you still need to go to the control panel and remove other SQL components (even though the business contact manager tells you it is uninstalling SQL). The COM surrogate error has gone.

akertis
Level 3
I'm confused. So you can't have SQL installed to use System Recovery? Also, system recovery shouldn't conflict with a program like Business Contact Manager that needs to be installed for some people. I don't like that solution to just remove both.

David_F
Level 6
Employee Accredited
It would appear that SQL 2005 server/express instance on a system running BESR 8.0x/8.5 is causing this error for a few of our customers. Has anyone had any luck having this error by turning off Data Execution Prevention on dllhost? Just curious? 

Johanvdv
Level 4

I did try that before.

 

No luck. Changing the DEP options did not resolve the issue.

Johanvdv
Level 4

Today I removed the SQL 2005 server express instance on the system where I have this problem. This also removed the microsoft SQL Server vss writer service.

 

I do not have the COM error after this action.

 

David,

 

Does Symantec have any reference on a conflict between BESR 8.0x/8.5 and SQL 2005 server/express ?

i.e. When does Symantec expect to fix this issue ?

David_F
Level 6
Employee Accredited
It would seem that the interaction with SQL 2005 with BESR 8.0x/8.5 is the source of the COM Surrogate Error; what has reached dev so far has the following variables:

Windows event tirggers like "When user logs-On" is triggered to cause the backup and then the error.
The drive being backuped or the backup job is stored on a MD1000 drive.
That a external drive is chained to a PERC 6/e controller
That BESR 8.5 is a inplaced upgrade and the previous systems log files like (i.e. BESR log.txt has not removed ahead time).

Could I have those who are getting this error please send me a private note of the case number you have opened up, and/or report if indeed you are getting this error and have SQL 2005 installed or occuring under differnt environmental conditions.

akertis
Level 3
I can tell you for sure that we aren't using when user logs-on triggers to do the backup. At least i'm not aware of that because it backs up while the user is logged on. We aren't using any sort of raid or md1000 drive either. We have ours backed up to a unc location that is a local sata drive on the server. I can confirm that we do have sql server 2005 express installed. I could be wrong but it seems that sql server 2005 developer is not erroring out. I know of one machine that has developer and I haven't seen any errors on that machine.

Johanvdv
Level 4

> Windows event tirggers like "When user logs-On" is triggered to cause the backup and then the error.

I have this error on both scheduled backups and "Run backup now" started from the BESR Manager.


> The drive being backuped or the backup job is stored on a MD1000 drive.

Not a factor. We store to a network share. That share is actually an iSCSI drive linked to a server.


> That a external drive is chained to a PERC 6/e controller

Not a factor. We store to a network share. That share is actually an iSCSI drive linked to a server.


> That BESR 8.5 is a inplaced upgrade and the previous systems log files like (i.e. BESR log.txt has not removed ahead time).

Not a factor. We had this issue on a 8.0.3 (new installation) and then on a 8.5 (inplace upgrade)

 

None of the variables quoted here seem to apply to my case.

 

I have 0 or NO support case numbers as I am only EVALUATING this product and thus am unable to create support cases.

 

I did have SQL Server 2005 (MSDE edition) installed on the system. Removing that database instance (and the associated VSS Writer) cleared the issue with BESR.

TAPC
Level 3
Partner Accredited
I agree with Johanvdv, it is nothing to do with hardware, local disk, NAS issues, what the trigger is for backup etc. It happened to me when you did a scheduled backup or a manual one. It is just an interaction with SQL (express in my case). Removing it (or BESR depending on which you value most) cures the problem.

Joerg_2
Level 3

Backups on my machine are only time-triggered and not event triggered. Error occurs also when I do start a Backup manually.

 

No MD1000 drive.

No external drive or PERC 6/e controller

I am running 8.03, not BESR 8.5

 

SQL 2005 is installed (with Outlook 2007)

 

Haven't filed a support case yet.

 

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Johandv,

 

Do you have to stop both services (SQL Server VSS Writer & MSDE database service) to get rid of this error?

 

And is this an English version of Windows? If not, what locale is it?

Johanvdv
Level 4

Chris, see a previous response in this (lengthy) thread.

 

----------------------

If I stop it (and for good measure the MSDE database service), then I do not get the COM Surrogate failure.

 

BUT then I get a new error message in my eventlog from the VSS service stating the following :

 

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {262b716e-bb23-41b5-aaef-e2c15e767167}. Routine details IVssSnapshotProvider::IsVolumeSupported() failed with 0x800706ba [hr = 0x800706ba].

 

And my vssadmin gives problems with all writers :

 

C:\>vssadmin list writers
vssadmin 1.0 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001 Microsoft Corp.

Writer name: 'Microsoft Writer (Service State)'
Writer Id: {e38c2e3c-d4fb-4f4d-9550-fcafda8aae9a}
Writer Instance Id: {11e068f9-32f1-418e-a992-ac5e2ab5ee1e}
State: [7] Failed

Writer name: 'MSDEWriter'
Writer Id: {f8544ac1-0611-4fa5-b04b-f7ee00b03277}
Writer Instance Id: {ce7d93d1-4b04-45a8-a9e5-aead6c42c36c}
State: [7] Failed

Writer name: 'Microsoft Writer (Bootable State)'
Writer Id: {f2436e37-09f5-41af-9b2a-4ca2435dbfd5}
Writer Instance Id: {9de7903a-8ea1-47da-a4b9-4028be535137}
State: [7] Failed

Writer name: 'WMI Writer'
Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
Writer Instance Id: {f544b3bf-82b8-4b7f-9956-e1f11eb17af2}
State: [7] Failed

Writer name: 'IIS Metabase Writer'
Writer Id: {59b1f0cf-90ef-465f-9609-6ca8b2938366}
Writer Instance Id: {e059c01e-d280-4acd-ad8a-420c6e29c7bf}
State: [7] Failed

 

And No, before I stopped the SQL Server VSS Writer service, I had no errors here.

I can get it back to working order using MS KB Article 940184  ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940184 )

English - United Kingdom

-------------------------------------

 

As I have now deinstalled MSDE on that system, I have lost my 'test case'. In order to reproduce it, I will have to restore it (maybe to a VM) and repeat additional tests.

 

This is an English version of Windows XP - SP2. My locale is set to English-United Kingdom.

 

BTW : I have support on Backup Exec for Windows but NOT for BESR.  Would it actually be possible for Support to make an exception and open a support case although I am not stricly allowed to have support on this product ? I am just evaluating.

 

As a side note : This one system is a test system with MSDE on it. I have spotted multiple systems in our organisation with a similar setup ( e.g. a Vista Ult. system with Outlook 2007 and MSDE ). I would like to know how to 'resolve' this issue without having to remove all traces of MSDE and its depending applications from our systems.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited
I have been able to reproduce this problem here by just installing SQL Express 2005.

 

Despite the errors I see, the recovery point is successfully created; is this what everyone else is seeing?

 

I will post back here with any further updates on this issue.

 

Note; has anyone tried using the 'Perform full VSS backup' option to see if this helps (edit job, click on advanced button)?

David_F
Level 6
Employee Accredited
I have one confirmed case where re-installing .NET Framework 2.0 package corrected this error those in a position who can do this please see if this corrects your instancee of this error and report back; thanks.