Once again, the internet proves that any computer problem you find yourself with, the internet has already had:

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2006/06/22/438094.aspx

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.

or hardly workin…

Here i sit, waiting out Microsoft time in my office. Do you have any idea how long it takes to copy a 200MB symantec installer folder across a VPN? This does not make for happy time. And apparently you’re expected to have Anti-virus on your servers and worksations…eh, who knew?

I believe the cold is finally making it’s way out of me, but my energy level is still in the shitter. I’m taking friday off, so I’ll have a day there to chill and get better, and maybe do some reading up with these IT books I downloaded. Or I’ll sit and watch Mythbusters….I think that’s far more likely.

I really hate microsoft time, it really has no bearing on reality. On the plus side of things, we’re getting closer to having all our sites on one domain finally, which means work gets easier, cause I don’t have to keep track of 4 domains, only 3, and one of those will be disappearing soon too, yay for a lightening work load!

end pointless ramblings for now while i await file copy