SystemWriter file not found and ANE4251W

[joka2]

I know this is an old topic, but none of the threads here are showing a solution for this issue (the newest since 2012). The clients are 7.1.1 and the Server is 7.1.1.

I'm bothered about query events giving me warning about this kind of exception:
"
ANE4251W SystemWriter file '\\hostname\c$\Windows\System32\drivers\somefile. sys or dll': not found.
"
The supposed resolutions is to have SKIPMISSINGSYSWFILES YES in the options set. But that only makes the backup continue, and still sending the warning to events. In my environment I have hundreds of clients, and about 30 now giving me this warning. So I don't want to use the only solution I know about, which is to create a dummy file for the missing file on every node.

So: Am I missing something that can help me? I wish the BA client would just finish it's job without sending result=8 back to events when it comes across missing files in the system folder (that's what the SKIPMISSINGSYSWFILES should be about right?)

Any ideas please?

 

[marclant]

You may already know this, but I'll explain how the system state backup starts, which will help you understand a bit better the issue.

TSM has no clue which files are part of system state, so at the beginning of the backup, it uses Microsoft's VSS to query all the VSS writers on the machine to obtain a list of files to backup and exclude as part of the system state. So if the VSS system writer reports to TSM that it needs to backup C:\Windows\abcxyz.dll, TSM will try to backup that file. TSM also has no way to know if the missing file is a critical file or a useless file, so it reports it so that you are aware of it and you can decide what corrective actions to take, if any. The backup would normally fail with missing system files, because it means the system state is incomplete, the SKIPMISSINGSYSWFILES option lets the backup complete, but it can't really report it as successful if there are files missing.

From this point on, looks like you know how to handle the workarounds.

The real solution in my opinion is to work with Microsoft to figure out why the VSS writers report that certain files need to be backed up while they do not exists. It sounds to me like it's the result of bad clean-up during an uninstall or an upgrade that removed unnecessary old files, without cleaning the metadata in the VSS writers.