Server freeze on backup start

[Marc_Debold]

Hi there,

we have a customer, who has a Windows Small Business Server 2003 with BESR 8.0 Small Business installed freshly (everything up to latest patch level). We configured a "standard" backup task to backup 2 partitions from a RAID-1 to a partition on a RAID-5 on the same machine.

The first time, we started the backup, the server froze. Mouse could be moved, server was still pingable, but Windows did not work any more. After 30 minutes we did a hard reset. The second time we started the backup, it worked perfectly. From there on it never worked again, the server immediately freezes after the backup starts. We tried to only backup the system partition (as the second partition contains millions of small files) - with no success.

What can we do now (except for disableing BESR as we have done for now)?

Regards,

Marc

[David_F]

Have you tried backing up to a different storage location like to a network share on say even a workstation class system or a external USB hard disk drive? Have you tried using the MSCONFIG’s selective startup ability to rule out possible 3rd party service or startup items. Does any event at or around the crash/hang gets recorded in the windows event logs?

[Marc_Debold]

1. No, no other backup location has been set.

2. No, the only applications running are SBS (without Exchange), Tobit David (www.tobit.com) and McAfee 8.5

3. Yes, about 2 minutes after the backup's scheduled start  there are 2 VSS error message in the system log: One (eventid 11) about a COM-Server "{790f2886-9889-4c99-8ef5-531add05d044}" named "SW_PROV" that could not be started and one VSS error with eventid 12292 (I don't have the error message right now, but I can get it if you need).

The problem with "trying around" is, that it is a productive server and as it stops responding after the backup starts, it has to be shut down "hard". After that, the Raid-1 is broken and has to be rebuilt (which takes some hours).

[Marc_Debold]

We have tried and reset everything (concerning BESR) to defaults. We backed up the server 4 times manually without any problem. So we scheduled the backup for 22:00 again and the next backup (running only some hours after our manual backups) killed the server again.

We checked the Windows scheduler, nothing is running at the same time, we disabled every task there to make sure, nothing would intervene with the backup.

Any chance to get help on this topic?

[David_F]

Marc, are you up to BESR 8.03 or higher on this system? Since manual backups are working are you getting, in addition to this VSS error messages getting events with V2ischeduler.dll messages?

[Marc__Debold]

No, sorry. Customer switched to Acronis True Image Server - works without errors.