Unable to activate System Restore

cbiweb · 14 Mar 2013

I don't know if this was an issue before installing SP1, but afterward I happened to notice it. I went to Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings > System Properties > System Protection. The list of available drives looked like this:

RECOVERY
(F: ) Iomega HDD
(C: ) OS (System)
OS (C: ) (Missing)

The "missing" item is a little odd, but I then did the following:

Clicked (C: ) OS (System)
Clicked the Configure... button where it says "Configure restore settings, manage disk space, and delete restore points"
Chose "Restore system setting and previous versions of files"
Moved the "Max Usage" slider to 12%
Clicked Apply

And this error popped up:

There was an unexpected error in the property page:
The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.
(0x8007007B)

Please close the property page and try again.

I rebooted and tried again, with the same result.

Any idea what's going on?

VistaKing · 14 Mar 2013

Hi Cbiweb

Can you upload an image of your disk management

Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

whs · 14 Mar 2013

Try this - in an elevated command prompt type or paste this command:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=12%

cbiweb · 14 Mar 2013

whs said:

Try this - in an elevated command prompt type or paste this command:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=12%

"Successfully resized the shadow copy storage association" - Seems to have worked.

VistaKing said:

Hi Cbiweb

Can you upload an image of your disk management

Here you go...

whs · 14 Mar 2013

Looks like we are making progress. Now if you want to check what restore points you have, the command is:

vssadmin list shadows

cbiweb · 15 Mar 2013

Thanks, whs. It's good that I can do those things, at least I know that system restore is working as it should, but now I'd like to find out what's causing the problem as described in my opening post. Any ideas?

NoelDP · 15 Mar 2013

Interesting you should mention this - I hardly ever look at that, so when I checked, I was surprised to find the same status here.

Monitoring is switched on, but the space allocation is 0 - and attempting to change it gives a 7b error.
Attempting to turn off monitoring gives a 0x8100010b error.

Looking in the Event log (as advised by the 10b error)
gives

Code:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        SPP
Date:          15/03/2013 09:22:11
Event ID:      16388
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      NoelAsus-PC
Description:
Failed to delete shadow copy \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy3 on volume \\?\Volume{2bc8d7d0-2a4c-11e2-8092-806e6f6e6963}\.  VSS error:  The specified object was not found. (0x80042308)  User action Retry the deletion or examine the event log for related VSS entries.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="Error">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="SPP" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="0">16388</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2013-03-15T09:22:11.000000000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>37296</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>Application</Channel>
    <Computer>NoelAsus-PC</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>\\?\Volume{2bc8d7d0-2a4c-11e2-8092-806e6f6e6963}\</Data>
    <Data>\\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy3</Data>
    <Data>The specified object was not found. (0x80042308)</Data>
    <Binary>0000000043240000212400000000000042BEB7C79AB23D79A6E400000000000000000000</Binary>
  </EventData>
</Event>

I have no problems on this system that I'm aware of - and SP1 was installed 18 months ago.

I'll have a hunt and see if I can work out what's causing this.

NoelDP · 15 Mar 2013

Hunting through the registry it seems that the GUID referred to relates to drive E: (!) - which does exist on my system, and appears in the System Restore listing as being switched off.

Switching the monitoring of E: on removes the OS (C:) (Missing) entry - switching the monitoring off again seems to have turned the trick :)

cbiweb · 15 Mar 2013

Tried your method, NoelDP, but no go. So I switched off monitoring of OS (C:) (Missing), which made it disappear entirely, and now I can set the Max Usage setting with no errors. Very odd. Thanks for the nudge in the right direction. :)

NoelDP · 15 Mar 2013

Glad to be of assistance!