subject: Fix: RSM: Unable to read from or write to the database. posted: Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:59:22 -0000
Problem:
When using the Management Console of a Windows 2000/2003 server, you
find that you cannot right-click your tape drive, or other RSM-
managed device. Right-clicking the drive causes an error message:
Unable to read from or write to the database.
There is a problem with the Removable Storage Service. Please
restart the service.
When you click OK, another error message appears:
The object identifier does not represent a valid object.
This snapin's display may be inconsistent with the Removable Storage
Service.
If the problem persists please restart the snapin.
When you click OK, the first "unable to read from or write to the
database" message is again displayed - in fact the two error messages
then go around in an unending loop and cannot be closed. The only
way to get rid of the error messages is to kill the MMC process using
Task Manager.
"Based on my research, this issue can occur if the internal Removable
Storage Manager (RSM) database is corrupted. This corruption prevents
media pools from being created or accessed."
"To resolve this issue, use the following method to manually
initialize an uncorrupted RSM database.
1. Start the Computer Management tool, double-click Services and
Applications, and then click Services.
2. Locate and stop the Removable Storage service (or change the
startup type from Automatic to Disabled), and then restart the
computer.
3. Start Windows Explorer, open the %SystemRoot%\System32\Ntmsdata
folder, and then rename the existing files in this folder so that
they have an .old file extension, or copy the files to a different
folder.
4. Restart the Removable Storage service (or change the startup type
from Disabled to Automatic), and then restart the computer.
After the RSM restarts, it creates a new database."
Note:
On Windows 2003, my Administrator account had insufficient
privileges to view or modify the %SystemRoot%\System32\Ntmsdata
folder. To get around this, I used the AT command to schedule a
command prompt for 1 minute into the future - this ran with SYSTEM
privileges, and I used this prompt to complete the repair.
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