22 June 2006

Shadow Copy failures: Scheduled task fails with General page initialization failed, error 0x8007000d.

I've rippled through quite a few nagging problems since my server failure at home a few weeks ago. One of the more intriguing problem I only noticed a couple of days ago. One server had not been running scheduled Shadow Copies. When you schedule shadow copies in Windows Server 2003 R2, not suprizingly it sets up a normal Windows Scheduled Task with name ShadowCopyVolume{volume} as shown below.


But, as you can see, it's never run and has status "Could not start". If you double click the task, you get the error "General page initialization failed. The specific error is 0x8007000d: The data is invalid". Once you dismiss the dialog, you see the normal task details, but cannot edit the user field (greyed out and blank). You could however create manual shadow copies, so that pretty much narrowed it down to a problem with the scheduled task rather than shadow copies itself.

Some searching on Technet and the MS Knowledgebase drew a blank (or at least nothing appearing to be directly relevant). There's an article here which gives some information which is close but only allows you to setup the task again with a domain account. I didn't want to do that as the Shadow Copy scheduled task is supposed to run under the NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM account.

However, I bow to Anil's greater knowledge from his blog entry here, specifically the update part at the end. Indeed, deleting C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application
Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\S-1-5-18\d42cc0c3858a58db2db37658219e6400_xxxx", deleting the scheduled task, disabling shadow copies and setting it back up again with a schedule creates it correctly.

Thanks Anil!
Cheers,
John.

[This post travelled in time. John is offline for a few days. It may take a while before any comments are published.]

Update June 2008. Apologies, the screenshots are lost in time.

 

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Comments

# Aidan said:
Thanks for this tip. Just had exactly the same problem with shadow copies not running on Server 2003 R2. Copies now running. :)
29 June 06 at 2:31 AM
# Justin said:
YOU ARE THE MAN... I have been searching for hours trying to fix all my scheduled tasks, they all had this problem. The fix is indeed:

DELETE ->

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application
Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\S-1-5-18\d42cc0c3858a58db2db37658219e6400_xxxx
30 June 06 at 8:02 PM
# Alex said:
Thanks a lot.
had the same troubles after moving a server from domain to domain.
Deleting the files in there did solve the problem.
Even MS Knowledgebase did not have that solution.

Thanks again and greetings from switzerland
Alex
26 July 06 at 3:42 AM
# Anil John said:
Any time! Glad I could help :-)
17 August 06 at 4:10 PM
# Sean Deuby said:
Wow, talk about serendipity. I had "figure out what the @#$@#% is wrong with Shadow Copies" on my home data server tonight, and I have many better things to do. Just before I started, I decided to stall by looking through your past blog entries as I've recently subscribed via NewsGator. Voila!
<Twilight Zone Theme>

Thanks!

Sean
23 August 06 at 11:21 PM
# Bruce Hartley said:

Great thanks.

Fixed the problem for me.

Think it got broken when I demoted a domain controller to be a normal server.

17 March 08 at 3:39 PM
# Dan Trower said:

Thanks so much for the posting this info.  This helped me with fix my problem.  

21 March 08 at 4:27 PM
# Mike Becker said:

Thanks for this man, you just saved me many hours and much vodka from frustration. Worked like a charm :)

23 March 08 at 10:12 PM
# Frank said:

Thanks, man!

Good information is rare in some cases. Yours was very valuable today!

15 April 08 at 4:58 AM
# BlueGlowy Records &raquo; Blog Archive &raquo; Shadow Copy Failures said:

PingBack from http://blueglowy.com/2008/05/13/shadow-copy-failures/

13 May 08 at 3:50 PM
# &raquo; Shadow Copy Failures Available Domains: said:

PingBack from http://availabledomains.biz/?p=1635

13 May 08 at 4:56 PM
# Mike said:

Great ... Thanks ... Fixed my problem

10 July 08 at 10:18 AM
# Steve said:

Wow!  That worked like a charm.  I'm so glad that you had this information available. Thanks so much!

16 September 08 at 7:32 PM
# sdaf said:

youre cool! thanx from russian village golievo!

22 May 09 at 5:27 AM
# Simon said:

Great fix - very obscure!

Mine broke when promoting a server to a DC.

23 May 09 at 6:21 AM
# Steve said:

I noticed that there was an unknown account with security priveleges to that file before I deleted it.  Similar to another poster...I think mine broke when I promoted to a DC.  This is a permissions issue.  The old machine accounts are gone, but the settings that refer to them are still hanging around in the scheduled tasks.  Thanks very much for posting this.  Immensely helpful.

10 September 09 at 3:32 PM

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