How to fix Backup and Restore Failure Windows 11 (error code 0x8078005D)

Elvis,

I am using Backup and Restore (Windows 7) in Control Panel, and saving to an external drive.

Issue Update: Intermittent Backup Failure on Windows 11 (VSS / System Image Phase)

Symptom:

Daily backups fail intermittently every 2–3 runs. The job runs normally for approximately 10 minutes (file-level copy succeeds), but fails consistently at the transition to the System Image creation phase.

Environment & Target Verification:

• Backup Target: External USB drive.

Drive Health: Target volume is active, healthy, writable, and has sufficient free space.

Power Management: USB selective suspend is disabled, the dedicated port is kept active, and target drive sleep/timeout is disabled.

Observed Behavior & Event Logs:

Failures consistently log the same Application Event IDs (pasted below).

Symptoms point directly to Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) or WMI subsystem failure during the snapshot preparation phase.

Troubleshooting Already Completed:

Re-registered wmiutils.dll (performed regsvr32 /u $\rightarrow$ reboot $\rightarrow$ regsvr32 $\rightarrow$ reboot).

Both the DLL re-registration and a standard host reboot act as a temporary workaround (allowing 2–3 successful daily backups before the failure recurs).

Please see the attached/pasted event log details below for review.

============================
Log Name: Application

Source: Microsoft-Windows-Backup

Date: 10/29/2026 1:09:54 PM

Event ID: 561

The backup operation that started at '‎1601‎-‎01‎-‎01T00:00:00.000000000Z' has failed because no backup storage location could be found. Please confirm that the backup storage location is attached and online, and then rerun the backup operation.

============================

Log Name: Application

Source: Windows Backup

Date: 10/29/2026 1:10:00 PM

Event ID: 4104

The backup was not successful. The error is: Windows Backup cannot find any of the backup storage locations. (0x8078005D).

============================

Log Name: Application

Source: VSS

Date: 10/19/2026 8:24:37 PM

Event ID: 13

Volume Shadow Copy Service information: The COM Server with CLSID {e579ab5f-1cc4-44b4-bed9-de0991ff0623} and name Coordinator cannot be started. [0x80070005, Access is denied.

This service does not always fail each time there is a backup failure

I am currently researching other software to do backups. Right now deciding if I will skip the creation of an image to test this for a few days. BTW...I also ran SFC to verify Windows file integrity. All good. Also ran built-in Windows utilities to check the back-up drive.

Ok, the VSS event is dated 19 October, while the backup failures shown are from 29 October, so they don’t establish a connection. Since rebooting alone also helps, we can’t conclude that re-registering wmiutils.dll fixes the underlying issue

After the next failure, before rebooting, run vssadmin list writers in an administrator Command Prompt and share a screenshot of the output, along with any VSS errors recorded at that same time. Also check whether the external drive is still accessible immediately after the failure