Recently we upgraded to Symantec's BackupExec 2010, and since then we have been getting a VSS writer failure when running our backup jobs. I am trying to do a simple backup of my Exchange server information stores and it will fails everytime. I get the following error: V-79-57344-65233 - AOFO: Initialization failure on: "\\Server Name\Microsoft Information Store\First Storage Group". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Snapshot provider error (0xE000FED1): A failure occurred querying the Writer status. Check the Windows Event Viewer for details. Writer Name: Exchange Server, Writer ID: {76FE1AC4-15F7-4BCD-987E-8E1ACB462FB7}, Last error: The VSS Writer failed, but the operation can be retried (0x800423f3), State: Failed during prepare snapshot operation (8). When looking into the failure I find that the VSS Exchange Writer has failed and stopped. I have dismounted and remounted the storage groups which also failed to correct the issue. We are using a Windows 2008 Standard Server and Exchange: 2007 Symantec support has been worthless since they have been unable to correct the problem of their software. When they failed to fix it they write the issue off as a windows problem. Has anyone been able to resolve this issue yet? Thanks

The only reliable method I know to clear a hanging VSS writer is to restart the server. What does it show for the Exchange writer when you run the following? vssadmin list writers Alexei

Hi, Please use Windows Server Backup to test the issue. I suggest you to restart the information store service on the exchange server and then use command "VSSadmin list writers" from the command prompt. The output of this command should provide all writers registered with VSS. Check the State of the Writers. If the state is anything other than Stable, it might be a cause of concern We can run the BETest tool to take VSS backup of the Exchange storage group. BETest is a test requestor that can be used to test the Exchange VSS writer. Please refer to the following article for more information: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/08/25/449684.aspx Thanks, Elvis