Problems with Windows system state backups and SQL
It appears there could potentially be issues with VSS when installing SQL on a Windows 2003 server. We had a machine that we were backing up with DPM (which uses, in this case, NTBackup to capture the system state). The machine was backing up fine until SQL Express was installed (I narrowed it down to this application by noting the install time of SQL and the time that system state backups started to fail). That machine is running Windows 2003 SP2 R2 with SQL Express installed. After investigating the event log, i noticed the following errors:
Event Type: Error Event Source: SQLWRITER Event Category: None Event ID: 24583 Date: 11/3/2008 Time: 4:08:13 PM User: N/A Computer: SDFMAXVCUS0013 Description: Sqllib error: OLEDB Error encountered calling IDBInitialize::Initialize. hr = 0x80004005. SQLSTATE: HYT00, Native Error: 0 Source: Microsoft SQL Native Client Error message: Login timeout expired SQLSTATE: 08001, Native Error: -1 Source: Microsoft SQL Native Client Error message: An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. SQLSTATE: 08001, Native Error: -1 Error state: 1, Severity: 16 Source: Microsoft SQL Native Client Error message: SQL Network Interfaces: Error Locating Server/Instance Specified [xFFFFFFFF]. DBPROP_INIT_DATASOURCE: SDFMAXVCUS0013\SQLEXPRESS DBPROP_INIT_CATALOG: master DBPROP_AUTH_INTEGRATED: SSPI
Event Type: Error Event Source: NTBackup Event Category: None Event ID: 8019 Date: 11/3/2008 Time: 3:05:28 PM User: N/A Computer: SDFMAXVCUS0013 Description: End Operation: Warnings or errors were encountered.</span></li>
Event Type: Error Event Source: VSS Event Category: None Event ID: 8194 Date: 11/3/2008 Time: 12:22:01 PM User: N/A Computer: SDFMAXVCUS0013 Description: Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error querying for the IVssWriterCallback interface. hr = 0x800706bf.</span></li>
I followed several KB articles and advice from a few forums and could not resolve the issue. I noticed that when running the following command:
vssadmin list writers
…I was getting the following error:
waiting for responses
these may be delayed if a shadow copy is being prepared
After some poking around, i finally shut down the SQL service and the SQL VSS Writer service and noticed that everything started working. The root problem was never located, but by disabling the SQL VSS Writer service and firing SQL Server service back up, everything worked fine. I advised the customer to re-install SQL Express to see if that resolved the issue.
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