I got this error while trying to perform a backup within backup and restore inside operations of Central Administration site.

I checked services on server within operations and it was showing that all the services had started, but on checking at services.msc i found out that the following service hadn’t started

Office SharePoint Server Search, after starting this service, the error got resolved.

Find more information over here

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sharepointgeneral/thread/dc1db06b-ac78-4547-b28d-a0d1efab3b80

Bye