I know this sounds strange, but let me get into the details.

We have the W2K8R2 box that seems to lose / stop most of the VSS writers,
about once a month and manually starting them doesn't work (requires
reboot) for the TSM backups.  Starts producing the errors:

ANS1948E The Microsoft volume shadow copy system components can not be
queried

Running latest 7.1.0.3 client.  Has been uninstalled and reinstalled
numerous times, including deleting all TSM directories, to no avail.
 Server is fully patched.

Even after rebooting the server (always during "black Tuesday" patching),
the backups run for a while and then start failing again, requiring another
reboot.

Last failure is from today's backups.  Windows event log shows a failure
source of "tsmVssWriter" and Event ID 4097 and plenty of other VSS errors
with lots of different ID's (8193, 24, 8224, 12342, 13)

Yes, this clearly sounds like a VSS/Windows problem.  Unfortunately, we
don't get any support from M$

Is there a way to backup systemstate with non-VSS tools?

Anyone else see this kind of problem?
--
*Zoltan Forray*
TSM Software & Hardware Administrator
BigBro / Hobbit / Xymon Administrator
Virginia Commonwealth University
UCC/Office of Technology Services
zforray AT vcu DOT edu - 804-828-4807
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