Windows Backup Error 0x81000037 – fixed!

Guys,

I just spent the better part of a few months working on my Windows 10 backup error, and I’m hoping to help you solve your problem.

The 0x81000037 error is pretty non descriptive, but in short what was causing my problem was corrupted files in c:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Deleted\[insert long string of characters here]\blah\blah\filename.ext

The way I tracked down the problem was to open “Backup and Restore (Windows 7)” and then click “Change Settings” –select my backup drive (in my case D:) clicking next, selecting the option “Let me choose”, clicking next, and then unselecting everything except for a the first folder in c:, in my case Games.

Then clicking next and letting the backup run…If the backup succeeds, repeating the process and adding in another folder to the backup, next I added “Program Files” and ran the backup again, this time, the error pops…

Then what I did was go back to the backup settings, unchecking “program files” but going into program files and selecting the first 5 folders (in my base 7-zip, Adobe, Bonjour, Common Files, Google) and re-running the backup…my backup was successful at this stage, so I repeated the process adding the next 5 folders in “Program Files” to the backup, and trying again..

Eventually I got the backup to fail, so I unchecked a few of the folders I last checked, and the error went away…in short, I narrowed it down to the “WindowsApps” folder… By luck, I happened to select everything in there except “Deleted” and the back up succeeded.. I then confirmed (by adding “windowsapps\deleted” to the backup) that the backup failed, so I knew something in there was the culprit..

Considering they were deleted apps [Skype and a few others], I saw no harm in just outright deleting those folders…but windows wouldn’t let me everything, it said, “Access denied” and left a few folders with a few files in them..I tried deleting the individual files (and changing permissions) on those files, but Windows kept telling me “Access Denied” and “File not found” depending if I was in Command Prompt or the File explorer.

What I had to do (long story short) was boot to a recovery disk, choose “repair pc”, then choose Troubleshoot and then “command prompt”, then once in command prompt, changing to drive letter F: (which really was my C: drive) then cd’ing to “Program Files” -> “WindowsApps” -> “Deleted” then as deep into the folders as I could go and then running “chkdsk” while in the folder with the files I couldn’t delete…Chkdsk managed to clear out the bad files, (it didn’t tell me there were any bad files found, the files just simple weren’t there when I ran “dir” next time..

To totally clear out the problem tho, I had to delete all the sub directories in the “deleted” folder by rebooting into normal windows, and then deleting the permissions on the “deleted” folder in “c:\windowsapps” and rebuilding them giving system, and my user full access…’

THEN the final step, opening up Winrar (7-zip works too), changing to the “c:\program files\windowsapps\” folder, clicking on the “deleted” folder, then pressing Shift+Del to delete them… Regular windows wouldn’t delete the file.

Notes: I ran chkdsk in every form imaginable from the recovery disk on drive F: and nothing changed until I ran “chkdsk” (with no arguments) while IN the folder that was giving me problems…once I ran that, the files that were in that folder, which I couldn’t delete, disappeared.

All I have to say is I wasted months of poking at this problem, and several days straight, trying to track down the issue..

Please reach out to me if you have a similar problem and I will do my best to help you fix your problem.. I realize this text isn’t very well thought out, and there are no pictures, but I’m a busy guy and can’t give more than that right now.

Let me know if this helps you.