System Restore Nightmares

[aolbfs]

I have tried every solution possible to sort out this failure of my laptop to retain automatically or manually created restore points. Nothing I have done/been advised to do has made one iota of difference.

I have tried disk imaging software, ALL of which failed due to an unspecified I/O error. No matter what I do with the MS shadow copy and volume shadow services, they will either fail to start or start then stop.

Is there a) any software that will copy/image my C:\ drive exactly (for storage on my D:\ drive for use in case of fatal crash) WITHOUT relying on the services mentioned above?

And b) is there any way I can run my sytem recovery software on my E:\ drive to restore my laptop to factory settings on my D:\ rather than my C:\ drive so that I could take my time in updating it and adding the software I want then delete the copy of Vista on the C:\ drive?

Would this serve as a workable solution, if one presumes that a factory re-install on the D:\ drive would rectify the problem with System Restore being experienced by the OS on the C:\ drive?

Checking my Event Viewer I get a warning about "Event 14 volsnap" stating that the 'shadow copies for C:\ were aborted due to an I/O failure on C:\'. It records this as happening at 02:55 am even though I am transcribing this at 23:19 pm!

Here is all the gobbledeygook that is stored about the error:
System
-Provider[ Name] volsnap
-EventID14[ Qualifiers] 49158
Level2Task0Keywords0x80000000000000-TimeCreated[ SystemTime] 2011-05-06T01:55:58.867Z
EventRecordID132602ChannelSystemComputername deleted by meSecurity

-EventData
\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy4C:C:0000000003003000000000000E0006C00B000000850100C000000000000000000000000000000000


Binary data:


In Words

0000: 00000000 00300003 00000000 C006000E
0008: 0000000B C0000185 00000000 00000000
0010: 00000000 00000000


In Bytes

0000: 00 00 00 00 03 00 30 00 ......0.
0008: 00 00 00 00 0E 00 06 C0 .......À
0010: 0B 00 00 00 85 01 00 C0 ....…..À
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

Is this of any assistance to you Windows experts?

The event log also reports VSS shutting down due to idle timeout (Event 8224)
and Event 8194 VSS unexpected error querying for the IVss writer callback interface hr=0x80070005 Operation: Gathering Writer Data (Writer Name System Writer)

VSS Event 8219
VSS Event 12305

 

[niemiro]

Hello aolbfs!

The event log also reports VSS shutting down due to idle timeout (Event 8224)

This is saying that the VSS Service had nothing to do, and so shutdown. The reason for this is quite simple. Both VSS and MSSCP are on demand services. They are not meant to be set to automatic! And so they are starting, and are then having idle timeouts, and by the time you see them, they have stopped.

Please set both VSS and MSSCP back to manual, but do NOT disable it. This is the ideal situation.

Then please post the jcgriff2 report asked for by Jonathan.

Thanks a lot!

Richard

 

[aolbfs]

Richard,

I tried to upload my cbs.log, but it was so large that the website kept freezing!
Would you mind addressing the questions raised at a) and b) in my last post?

If either of these turns out to be a workable solution, it would seem much easier than the nightmare I am having trying to run reports and tinker with things I know little or nothing about!


Thanks for trying to help.


Services set to manual as advised