Friday 1 February 2013

More Backup Woes: Error 0x81000037

Today, I was called out to a client who reported that their backups were failing.  They just use the standard Windows 7 backup, but after getting about 30% of the way through, the backup failed with the above error.

It turns out the problem was caused by the anti-virus software detecting a virus (some Java exploit) during the backup, and causing it to fail.  The virus was being reported in Microsoft Security Essentials in a shadow copy on the disk.

So, my solution, was first, clean the account that was infected using Security Essentials.  That would probably be sufficient to let the backup complete, but I also took the following additional steps, just to be certain nothing was hanging around in a previous snapshot:

  1. Uninstall Java.  You know you want to anyway.
  2. Right click the C drive, and choose disk cleanup, go to the more options tab, and choose system restore and shadow copies.

Capture

After deleting, your disk should no longer contain any copies of the file security essentials is complaining about, and backups should be able to proceed as normal.