StartSnapshotSet failed, error -3042

[minidomo]

One of my users today told me his computer was extremely slow to respond to commands. Without writing half a page of notes, I'm leaning to one of two causes: 1) a glitch in the Flash plug-in auto-update mechanism (seems most likely candidate) or 2) internal hard drive failure. I've reviewed the logs for that system -- only found one sign about a search function taking longer than normal, and no obvious read/write errors. But the slow operation, slow boot-up, slow shut-down are all signs I've seen before with systems trying to read/write and having problems doing so. After manually uninstalling the older version of Flash and installing the new version (and rebooting thereafter), all seems well. But, to me, the jury is still out as to whether that was the cause.

 

This station is backed up remotely by another Windows station (Windows 7 Pro 32-bit running Retrospect 7.7.620). The client on this station is also current (7.7.114). It is backed up by duplicating the user's home folder from their computer to a local hard drive on the Retrospect computer. I reviewed recent log entries for this station, and saw the following log entries from yesterday. Today, I deleted all the contents of the target folder on the Retrospect computer and ran a full backup of the client with no errors.

 

My question is -- do the errors in the log entries below imply hard drive failure at all? Just trying to see if there's any confirmation this user's hard drive is starting to fail. Thanks.

 

 

+ Duplicate using Smith at 9/19/2012 12:30 PM

9/19/2012 12:30:01 PM: Connected to Smith

T-7: VssWBuildSnapshotSet: StartSnapshotSet failed, winerr -2147212522, error -3042

Can't use Open File Backup option for john on Smith, error -3042 ( there is already a Snapshot set in progress)

To volume JohnSmith on CentralPlexus (Z:)...

 

- 9/19/2012 12:30:01 PM: Copying john on Smith

File "C:\Users\john\Documents\Outlook Files\JohnSmith.pst": can't read, error -1111 ( locked range conflict)

[bobbodavis]

Probably not, I see this message sporadically, but it's not that frequent. By default, Win 7 uses Volume Shadow Service (VSS) to provide the Win 7 option "restore previous versions" for users so that they can easily restore older versions of files on the Operating system partition or drive. Retrospect also relies on VSS to be able to backup "open files" which would otherwise be locked out. So, if VSS is already in use by Win 7 and Retrospect is trying to backup the same "open" files at that particular moment, there will be a conflict.

 

Maybe try backing up the system with Retrospect at a different time, especially if you know that Windows 7 backup is already running during that time frame.

 

If you want to check your disk for errors, run "chkdsk /F" to scan and disk for bad sectors / tables and force a repair. Or, from the OS GUI, right click the drive, select properties and use the Error-checking "check now" feature. These options may take some time though, so be prepared to give it a few hours depending on the size of your disk.