DriveImageXML + Win7-64b = Volume Shadow Services error?

[tmathews]

I would like to use DriveImage XML under Windows 7 64-bit to do backups. When I try to back up the system drive a get a series of errors complaining that Volume Shadow Services can't be initialized. I can click through these and it will run but it warns that the image may be corrupted. Same thing happens if I select Try Volume Locking First instead of Try Volume Shadow Services first.

DriveImageXML's help text says to verify that Volume Shadow Services and MS Software Shadow Copy Provider are running. They weren't, so I started them but still get the same message. I also saw a Microsoft Knowledge Base article that suggested that Volume Shadow Services should be set to start Manually (mine was Automatic), but that made no difference. I believe I tried all permutations of the two services started/stopped and Manual/Automatic with all resulting in the same error.

Has anyone else gotten this to work? If so, what's your recipe?

Macrium's Reflect seems to offer similar functionality so I'm looking at that as a replacement. In one quick test I got no complaints about Volume Shadow Services so this looks promising. Any comments on this under Windows 7 64-bit?

[Bryllars]

I tried tp use Vista today - not 64 - to do the same thing and got the same message.

[Bryllars]

found this in another forum

"Finally I remembered that there is a command-line utility to look into VSS on
a machine. I typed

vssadmin list shadows

at a command prompt and it showed that there is a shadow copy on some kind of
virtual volume (\\?\Volume{2eb5f062-fd3d-11d8-8bb5-806d6172696f}\). Stopping
and starting the Volume Shadow Copy service did not remove the shadow copy.

Maybe this is a remnant from an old backup? I don't know how to directly
delete shadow copies under Windows XP, but let's see if a reboot helps...

Bingo! After the reboot, the "vssadmin list shadows" command showed "No shadow
copies present in the system," and DriveImage XML was able to create a new
shadow copy and do the backup. "

[tmathews]

Thanks for following up on this. I've handed off the Windows 7 box to the in-laws so I can't play with it anymore; otherwise, I would try this for peace of mind. I did try rebooting after several configurations of VSS and still couldn't get it to work but I didn't try vssadmin to see what that thought.

I ended up going with Reflect -- works without problems on the Windows 7 machine and my XP and Vista boxes. Faster and more compact images, too (though to be fair I never played with compression under DriveImageXML).