Jeffrey Dykzeul wrote, in part,  on 8/16/2004 11:40 AM:

>I got a backup failure over the weekend with EXIT STATUS 196, which means
>that the backup window closed. But digging into the logs reveals that
>immediately before the 196 error  there was an EXIT STATUS 174 with the
>message "media manager - system error occurred". That's pretty generic and
>does not tell me much. Anybody have any ideas about what could cause a 174?
>

Lots of things, I think.  Take a look at the problems log at the time.  
The detailed status in the Admin Console also often shows enough 
information.  Mine usually fail with bptm and/or bpbrm. 

My Windows clients particularly like to fail full backups w/status code 
174. :-( 

Most common seems to be ...

   Critical bptm(pid=xxx) attempted to write xx gigabytes (x bytes) it 
is not a multiple of 512

Some have hinted v5.x is better in this respect (both server & all 
clients in a policy).

By all means, give Veritas support a call!

cheers, wayne