Solved 0x80070002 error in Vista Backup Centre

Hi,

I first posted this in one of the MS Newsgroups, but just in case anyone here has some ideas, I hope you'll forgive if I repost.

My PC tried to run its weekly backup yesterday, but failed. This is the first time this has happened - the last successful backup was on 4th February 2008.

I back up my C Drive files onto a second internal hard drive. This drive has two partitions (Z and F). Z is just used for backups, and there is still 176GB free out of 238GB on the partition.

The error occurs only a minute or so into the backup attempt. The error message that comes up is:

'The backup did not complete successfully.
An error occurred. The following information might help you resolve the error: The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002)'

Googling the problem shows others have had it, but no definitive resolution is given.

I have tried deleting the backup tasks from schedule manager, moving the existing backup volumes into a temporary sub directory, and creating a whole new shadow backup from scratch in the root of Z. However, even this fails with the same error. I'm beginning to suspect a registry problem.

Is this a known Vista bug? Will SP1 resolve it? (I understand that there are several bug fixes for Backup & Restore centre planned).

Note that I cannot do a System Restore as I read a post that suggested this was down to too many restore points (so deleted them ). I have also attempted an SFC (no problems found) and have error checked both drive (no faults found).

How embarrasing for my first post

Immediately after posting that I thought of searching through the MS Newsgroups for the error using the search facility on their webpage access.

There was a post in there suggesting that this was down to profile entries in the Registry without an image path.

So I looked at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

and lo and behold there were two profile keys in there without profile image paths. No idea how they got there.

Have deleted them and Backup is now working again.

Can't believe I spent a whole evening yesterday trying to sort this out - this sort of thing always happens to me!

cj thanx to your post you solved this problem for me. in fear n trembling first removed all profile entries without an image path. not a good idea as this disabled various functions (eg control panel and backup & restore). couldn't work out how to restore all the entries i removed to get back to square one (dragging or copying no good), until i realised that double clicking automatically restored them from where they were saved (ext hd) to their original location. i then decided to remove them one by one and luckily hit on the rogue one right away. what a performance beats me how this rogue profile was created in the first place and no warning from the os about the effect it would have

I had the same problem this morning and found your posting.

I went to where you pointed in the Registry but after getting to the ProfileList I lost you.

I hate to be so dumb but could you perhaps provide a screen shot or more detail on what exactly I should delete?

Thanks.

I assume you got as far as this (see attached). you then need to open each file (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\S-1-5-21-598542172-599072555-1665720448-1000, in my example) and check to see that the ProfileImagePath makes sense (i.e. it points to an actual user profile, not some spurious name). I don't know how these spurious keys get created, but you simply have to delete any keys with spurious ProfileImagePaths. It is best to make a copy (on, say Desktop) of all files in the ProfileList before you delete any, in case you delete a valid one (as I did first of all)

Thanks for the help. I tried the ones on my PC (the first three). The S-1-5-18, 19 & 20.

That must not be the ones.

I'm afraid to mess around too much. I've tried to do an attachment. Couldn't figure out how to reduce it and it still be readable?

That was great CJ. That fixed my problem. I started having my backups fail a few months ago. I thought it was a file corruption problem. Ignored it for a while. I went to ProfileList and found that there were 3 short entries and then 2 long entries. One of the long entries had no ImagePath. I deleted it and backup seems to be working fine now.

Thanks.

cj_london said:

Immediately after posting that I thought of searching through the MS Newsgroups for the error using the search facility on their webpage access.

There was a post in there suggesting that this was down to profile entries in the Registry without an image path.

So I looked at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

and lo and behold there were two profile keys in there without profile image paths. No idea how they got there.

Have deleted them and Backup is now working again.

Click to expand...

This fixed my problem also. I had an extra entry (5 total) named .DEFAULT. It had only one filein it. I exported it to my desktop (just in case) and deleted it. The back up is running fine now.

thanks

In case someone has the same issue.
I found out that the error occurred because this key was missing in the registry:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsBackup
I created the key (no data) and everything worked fine.

(Vista 32-bits SP2)

fmongeau you are a diamond.

I created a key as you suggested and my backup is now working. No need to delete anything.