When you have a servers which has an error with one ore more vss writers.
You can check if the vsswriters are working properly using the command “vssadmin list writers”.

See also the KB Article : [1] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940032
See KB Article : [2] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940184/en if the error  “Error: 0×8000FFFF” occurs.

You can repair these vss writers using the following command:

cd /d %windir%\system32
Net stop vss
Net stop swprv
regsvr32 ole32.dll
regsvr32 oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 vss_ps.dll
vssvc /register
regsvr32 /i swprv.dll
regsvr32 /i eventcls.dll
regsvr32 es.dll
regsvr32 stdprov.dll
regsvr32 vssui.dll
regsvr32 msxml.dll
regsvr32 msxml3.dll
regsvr32 msxml4.dll
vssadmin list writers