Error: SMS Writer not found.

Good morning,

We have SCCM 2007 SP2 with R3 installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise x64.  This system has been running since Oct 2008 and we have not updated it since installing R3 in 2010.

Once, in 2009, the "Backup ConfigMgr Site Server" task failed and I found "Error: SMS Writer not found." in the smsbkup.log.  I found a post in this forum which suggested restarting "SMS_SITE_VSS_WRITER."  I did that and the backups started working again.  Yesterday, I found the same issue - "Error: SMS Writer not found." in the smsbkup.log.  vssadmin list writers also did not show the writer.  Again, I restarted the "SMS_SITE_VSS_WRITER" service and checked vssadmin.  The following was listed:

Writer name: 'SMS Writer'
   Writer Id: {03ba67dd-dc6d-4729-a038-251f7018463b}
   Writer Instance Id: {63cdb7e1-a819-4c4f-ab69-304aa4ec6f90}
   State: [1] Stable
   Last error: No error

This morning, I checked the backup and it failed again, again with "Error: SMS Writer not found." in the smsbkup.log.  Again, I checked vssadmin and the writer was not listed.  I restarted the SMS_SITE_VSS_WRITER service, but don't have a lot of confidence the backup will be successful tonight.

Any suggestions on what I can check?

Thanks,

Terence Durning