Diagnose Backup Problems

From We Got Served Wiki

One of the big issues with Windows Home Server is that the backup fuctionality breaks rather often. However, there are a number of "easy" things to fix those issues.

What to Do

Manual Backup

Before anything else, try running a manual backup. If that works, it's probably a driver issue with waking up the computer, or triggering a backup. Else, run a manual backup after each step.

Scanning the Disk

On the client computer that is having issues try running scanning each disk, or running "chkdsk /f /r" on each disk. This will scan the disk for issues and repair them, including bad sectors.

Re-associate VSS

If that doesn't work or if you've installed a product such as Ghost or Acronis, try re-associating the VSS files by running the follow commands from a dos prompt (run "cmd.exe" with admin privileges):

Cd windows\system32
Net stop vss
Net stop swprv
regsvr32 ole32.dll
regsvr32 vss_ps.dll
Vssvc /Register
regsvr32 /i swprv.dll
regsvr32 /i eventcls.dll
regsvr32 es.dll
regsvr32 stdprov.dll
regsvr32 vssui.dll
regsvr32 msxml.dll
regsvr32 msxml3.dll
regsvr32 msxml4.dll

If it errors out at registering swprv.dll, just finish everything and re-run everything.

Hardware Issue

After the backup fails, verify that the server is still accessible over the network. If it isn't, it's a network adapter issue, and you'll likely need to update the drivers for it, or to "downgrade" it.

Else, updated the storage controller drivers.

Credits

This page was original written by drashna with help from Dave Marchant for We Got Served.