OK, to branch this discussion from another discussion... @Vincent, both services (Volume Shadow Copy and Windows Backup) appear to be running normally. Here is where I suspect the problem is. Years ago when I first installed Windows 7 RTM on my computer at home, I did a vanilla clean install, but afterwards found that Windows Backup would not work because of Volume Shadow Copy problems. After spending some time on the Forum here is what we discovered. Windows Setup created the invisible reserved partition too small. It was only 100 MB. What was happening was the Volume Shadow Copy was failing because it could not make a shadow copy on this volume. The solution to this problem was that I did another clean install of Windows, but I manually increased the sized of the hidden Reserved partition from 100 MB to 200 MB. All the rest of the Windows Setup install was vanilla. Afterwards Windows Backup worked fine. This was clearly a bug in Windows 7 Ultimate x64 RTM. Alas, I have never found any mechanism for reporting bugs to Microsoft, so I was not able to followup further. Fast forward to my Dell 990. Dell images the 990 with 3 partitions: the hidden Reserved (100 MB), the small Recovery (800 MB), and the System (the rest of the drive). I suspect that Volume Shadow Copy is having problems because the hidden Reserved partition is also too small. I will have to try to make this larger (later) to see if this solves the problem. The other factor in this is that this is one of our test boxes so what I do is: before initial boot, I boot Win PE from a thumb drive, then use GimageX to image all three factory partitions to a safe place. Later, after testing, I can restore the 990 back to the original factory image. I do this because Dell has no process to restore the factory image of their systems in the field, but we need to be able to test our software installation process from a clean factory image. It is possible our factory image restore process is causing a problem, but I will have to investigate further. As an aside, the message I see in the event log is: - <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> - <System> <Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Backup" Guid="{1DB28F2E-8F80-4027-8C5A-A11F7F10F62D}" /> <EventID>521</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>2</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-08-09T20:13:27.023343500Z" /> <EventRecordID>1804</EventRecordID> <Correlation /> <Execution ProcessID="3936" ThreadID="1824" /> <Channel>Application</Channel> <Computer>creoservice-PC</Computer> <Security UserID="S-1-5-18" /> </System> - <EventData> <Data Name="BackupTime">2012-08-09T20:13:24.636000000Z</Data> <Data Name="ErrorCode">2155348129</Data> <Data Name="ErrorMessage">%%2155348129</Data> </EventData> </Event> As usual, Windows Messages are next to useless. Informative message are to Microsoft like sunlight is to vampires. Cheers, Eric ______________________________ Hi Eric, First, please check if Volume Shadow Copy and Windows Backup services are running and set to automatic in Services Console. 1. Click on Start, type Services in Start Search. When the Services page is open, scroll the page to find Volume Shadow Copy and Backup service. 2. Right click on them and check if they are started. 3. If the services are disabled, start the services and set it to Automatic, then check if the issue disappear. Second, please run sfc command to check if it can fix this issue: How to use the System File Checker tool to troubleshoot missing or corrupted system files on Windows Vista or on Windows 7 If the issue persists, I also would like to suggest you perform an In-Place upgrade to repair the system: How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 & Windows Server 2008 R2 Hope this helps. Vincent Wang TechNet Community Support