VSS Writers: System Writer - Waiting for completion

Question

_{Thursday, July 1, 2010 6:56 AM}

Hi,

We have Windows Server 2003 R2 in our environment and we use EMC Networker 7.4 to take backup of these servers. We take the system state backup of these servers with the help of a feature in Networker called VSS Save sets.

Now randomly in certain servers this VSS backup fails while the file system backup (like C:\ D:\ occurs successfully. While investigating the VSS backup failure issue we observed that VSS backup fails when the System writer (by issuing "VssAdmin list writers" command) is in waiting for completion state. VSS backups are successful on those systems where system writer is in stable state. I have googled a lot to resolve this issue and applied all the relevent solution by applying pathes related to VSS, registering dlls etc but the issue still persists. If we reboot the server then it solves the issue for time being but after few days it surfaces again. I have also tried to stop/restart the MS Software Shadow Copy Provider service on the affected server but the System writer still remains in Waiting for Completion state.

Please find the the output of the Vssadmin list writers command of one of such affected server below:

Writer name: 'System Writer'
   Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
   Writer Instance Id: {664fe3b7-c464-440b-8f1f-20558c21d777}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'SqlServerWriter'
   Writer Id: {a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}
   Writer Instance Id: {89102b4b-3cf9-4a7e-9927-d6d8bd5c6eff}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'MSDEWriter'
   Writer Id: {f8544ac1-0611-4fa5-b04b-f7ee00b03277}
   Writer Instance Id: {3bd4a708-343a-4ea6-aa57-2b349494f0cb}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Registry Writer'
   Writer Id: {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485}
   Writer Instance Id: {ffb82a13-eb75-4cf3-a317-e33d6ca5bc3f}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Event Log Writer'
   Writer Id: {eee8c692-67ed-4250-8d86-390603070d00}
   Writer Instance Id: {d4212250-fc73-4921-af15-70d74a5a2874}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'COM+ REGDB Writer'
   Writer Id: {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f}
   Writer Instance Id: {fe90b4c1-d40d-425b-8813-15792b68bb46}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Cluster Service Writer'
   Writer Id: {41e12264-35d8-479b-8e5c-9b23d1dad37e}
   Writer Instance Id: {7658584d-5860-429c-926f-fb50fb17f432}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'WMI Writer'
   Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
   Writer Instance Id: {9cb1708b-74d8-43fa-b870-01b487ac14b1}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

Writer name: 'BITS Writer'
   Writer Id: {4969d978-be47-48b0-b100-f328f07ac1e0}
   Writer Instance Id: {0b48b192-8372-4a95-bf07-0b9edd0ddced}
   State: [5] Waiting for completion
   Last error: No error

Please tell me how can I make the System writer into stable state without restarting the server.

Regards

Kunal Bhadra

All replies (9)

_{Thursday, July 8, 2010 11:43 AM}

Hi,

I did not get any response till date for my posting. Can anyone reply to this?

_{Wednesday, October 13, 2010 1:31 PM}

Try this:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sdoakes/archive/2006/02/03/418722.aspx

Run these commans and reboot. See if that helps.

_{Thursday, November 24, 2011 1:36 PM | 11 votes}

Simply restart Cryptographic Services on server & error will go away :-)))

_{Tuesday, April 24, 2012 12:12 PM}

I had the same issue and the tip from ranjeet013 worked like charm to me!

Many thanks!

_{Thursday, May 17, 2012 3:56 PM}

Restarting Cryptographic Service did not help in my case.  Any other options besides rebooting the server.

_{Wednesday, October 9, 2013 2:35 PM}

solved.

thank you!

_{Tuesday, November 19, 2013 8:23 AM}

Care to share how??

_{Thursday, April 17, 2014 8:11 AM}

writer status waiting for completion  - did restart Cryptographic Services and sever was reboot but still having issue with - writer status waiting for completion

_{Saturday, October 6, 2018 10:47 PM}

Simeon Demamie Libamba,

Did you ever get this solved?