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1086 - BITS writer offline and pending reboot prevents Full System Backup

Source: helpdesk.redstor.com Product: Redstor Imported content type: kb_article Source folder: Troubleshooting Modified: Modified on Mon, 21 Jul, 2025 at 12:48 PM

Symptom

Section titled “Symptom”

Full System Backup will not complete, reporting a problem with BITS VSS writer (Background Intelligent Transfer Service Volume Shadowcopy Service writer):

Error: Selected writer 'BITS Writer' (48b0be47-4969-d978-e0c1-7af028f300b1) is offline Error: Backup failed: A selected writer was not found

Cause

Section titled “Cause”

The BITS writer may go offline when Windows updates have a pending reboot.

This offline status then prevents Full System Backup from running.

Solution

Section titled “Solution”

It is possible that restarting the BITS service and the Redstor Agent service may resolve this issue temporarily, but this is not always successful.

The recommended solution is to reboot, allowing the updates to be installed. Please note that because of the way Windows updates are queued, more than one reboot may be required if there is a large backlog of updates.