Circumventing error 80070006 when running VBS (in this case: DBRESTORE.VBS to backup/restore your Windows XP Embedded Database): wscript versus cscript
Posted by jpluimers on 2009/07/10
At a client, I had to backup their Windows XP Embedded Database using DBRESTORE.VBS.
You can find more about that tool in DBRestore Command Line Syntax.
Error 80070006 during dbrestore.vbs execution
This tool is supposed to be run from the command-line, but the first thing I got was an error 80070006.
Since I the client was running a Dutch Windows system, the error would manifest itself as this:
--------------------------- Windows Script Host --------------------------- Script: C:\temp\ValueAdd\dbrestore.vbs Regel: 72 Teken: 2 Fout: De ingang is ongeldig. Code: 80070006 Bron: (null) --------------------------- OK ---------------------------
Although I’m not a VBS programmer, I know how to read source code in various languages, so below is how I solved the issue.
You can run Windows Scripting Host in debug mode using these switches:
C:\temp\ValueAdd>wscript //d dbrestore.vbs
The problem was around these lines of code, manifesting itself on the ‘WriteLine’ call:
Option Explicit Dim g_oStdOut : Set g_oStdOut = WScript.StdOut Sub WLF(text) g_oStdOut.WriteLine text ' this was line 72 End Sub
Luckily, Microsoft has a long list of these kinds of error codes on their site.
The English translation of error 80070006 is “Invalid handle.”.
So apparantly, Windows Scripting Host does not have StdOut.
This technet post taught me there are two kinds of scripting hosts: wscript.exe and cscript.exe
They both can execute .VBS files, but cscript is bound to the console, and wscript is detached from the console.
And since on this machine .VBS files were bound to wscript.exe in stead of cscript.exe, I got the error message.
The final solution was simple:
C:\temp\ValueAdd>cscript dbrestore.vbs MACHINE_NAME c:\temp\XP-Embedded-backup /CB
Now the client has backups…
–jeroen
Edit: Duh – somehow I missed this post on my first search round: Backing Up and Restoring Your XP Embedded Database – the comments there clearly explain the 80070006 :-)
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