Windows 7 VSS Error–Essentials Backups Failed

June 29, 2016 by 1 Comment

WindowsVistaBackupIconThis issue came up on our own internal accounts machine, so it was pretty critical to get it resolved.

Seemingly out of the blue, the machine decided to stop backing up. There was nothing particularly helpful in the logs on the Essentials Server. Checking the logs on the client itself revealed a string of VSS related errors.

I decided to abandon the Client PC backup at this point, because if the underlying cause was VSS, then what we need to do was fix VSS and then this would also fix the client backups. Read more of this post

Filed under Backup, Essentials, General, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with , , , ,

SBS 2011 Essentials & UEFI Client Backups

June 8, 2015 by 3 Comments

sbse-conI have been reinstalling my lab over the last week or so, moving away from a GUI based Server 2012 running Hyper-V, to the Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 OS. I am also now no longer having to swivel in my chair 90 degrees to manage the VMs, as i have installed the Hyper-V tools on my Desktop PC.

Anyway, as part of the rebuild i trashed all of my existing VMs and have built new ones. Starting with SBS 2011 Essentials. I installed, along side it, 2 clients. Windows 7 and Windows 8. I took advantage of the new Gen2 VM for Windows 8.1 and of course ran into an issue with the client backup.

There has been a hotfix available for this issue since at least 2013, so it was no surprise that i needed to download it. Read more of this post

Filed under Backup, Essentials, SBS E, WIN 8 Tagged with , ,

Essentials 2012 R2 – Client Restore

January 30, 2014 by 33 Comments

Logo1Congratulations on the purchase of your brand new Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials Server. I’m sure she will give you years of trouble free.. er.. serving.

No doubt one of the features that attracted you to Essentials R2 over its predecessor was the unique way it can be licensed in Hyper-V. No?

Regardless of that, you may well be familiar with the Client PC Backup Service that comes as part of this OS. You may also know that you create a USB key to boot the client PC from in order to launch Bare Metal Restore. Something i documented with real aplomb on YouTube. 

However, if you have decided to virtualise your Essentials server – how are you going to get that USB disk plugged in? Assuming you do already have a USB key what if your NIC is not supported?

Read more of this post

Filed under Backup, Essentials, General, WSE Tagged with , , ,

Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Shutdown client machines after a backup

November 23, 2012 by 6 Comments

WSSE_LogoA client of ours who is running a Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials on their SBS 2011 Standard network (for client PC Backup) Logolikes their machines to shutdown each night after a backup.

This could apply to any of the Essentials Server SKUs including SBS 2011 E, WHS 2011 or Essentials 2012. 

We schedule the backups to run between 7pm and 11pm so all the machines will have time to backup. It is really simple to set this shutdown task up, of course some people prefer their machines to go to sleep or hibernate but in this case we actually want to turn off those machines.

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Filed under Backup, Essentials, SBS E, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with , , , ,

Quick Fix: SBS Essentials Client Backup – Drive Offline?

February 17, 2012 by Leave a comment

sbsessI recently added my Laptop to my Essentials server, so it would be backed up.

At the time i had 2 partitions a C and a D partition. Whilst reconfiguring my laptop to dual boot Windows 2008 R2 I decided, following a conversation with Tim Barrett, to boot the Windows 2008 install from a VHD, rather than a partition. So i decided to remove that D partition.

After doing this, the Backups kept failing.

Read more of this post

Filed under Backup, General, Quick Fix, SBS E, Tips & Tricks Tagged with , , , , , ,

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