Wednesday, August 06, 2014

How to fix common Microsoft Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS) errors

 I've faced different types of VSS failure during my development and testing and though I should put together a blog post to summarize how to solve these VSS failure




Types of Error

Looks in to Windows Event logs: Common event IDs that I have encountered are: Event ID 8193, 8194, 8230, 12289, 12292, 12293
You might see other errors related to VSS Snapshot. A list of VSS Error Codes is available at the following URL:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa381603(v=vs.85).aspx



Other errors:
The Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshot provider selected returned: "Unexpected provider error". Ensure that all provider services are enabled and can be started. Check the Windows Event Viewer for details.

Error E4F3000E: Snapshot failure while using Volume Shadow Copy Service. Please check application event log for VSS errors. Error code: EndCreateSnapshotSet(-2147212300).
Cause
VSS Snapshot errors might occur due to various reasons, such as Microsoft VSS is not registered properly with the operating system, Shadow Copy Association for the volume is corrupt, misconfigured, file system corruption, permission or other environmental factors.

How to fix the problem:

1. Reboot the machine. Sometimes a reboot is enough to reset the VSS framework. 

2. Ensure that the Microsoft VSS services are not 'disabled'. Manually start VSS, This should start without any errors.

3. Open a command prompr with administrator rights, and type VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS. Ensure that the writers are stable.

4. Ensure that all VSS writers are in stable state condition. Do this by opening a command prompt with administrative permissions. At the prompt, type VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS. All writers should be stable.
 
5. Resize the VSS shadow storage using vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage command.

The command should be run as an Administrator. Following are a few examples:
vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=UNBOUNDED (or specify size = 500MB)
Resize the VSS shadow storage for System Reserved and Windows Recovery Environment partitions (if they exist), for example:
vssadmin resize ShadowStorage /For=\\?\Volume{a309c667-5a3f-4718-9d4b-e128827866eb} /On=\\?\Volume{a309c667-5a3f-4718-9d4b-e128827866eb} /MaxSize=UNBOUNDED.
You can find the volume GUID by running “mountvol” command. Alternatively, you can assign a drive letter to the hidden volume and do the shadow storage resize using the commands explained in the previous point.

6. Delete all the existing shadow copies using the following command: vssadmin delete shadows /all

7. If you still find errors, Re-register the VSS components
Sometimes re-registering VSS core components can fix errors. Copy the following commands to Notepad and save the file with a ‘.bat’ extension. Run the .bat file by opening a command prompt and entering the .bat file name.

net stop "System Event Notification Service"
net stop "Background Intelligent Transfer Service"
net stop "COM+ Event System"
net stop "Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider"
net stop "Volume Shadow Copy"
cd /d %windir%\system32
net stop vss
net stop swprv
cd /d %windir%\system32
net stop vss
net stop swprv
regsvr32 /s ole32.dll
regsvr32 /s oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 /s vss_ps.dll
vssvc /register
regsvr32 /s /i swprv.dll
regsvr32 /s /i eventcls.dll
regsvr32 /s es.dll
regsvr32 /s stdprov.dll
regsvr32 /s vssui.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml3.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml4.dll
vssvc /register
net start swprv
net start vss
sfc /SCANFILE=%windir%\system32\catsrv.DLL
sfc /SCANFILE=%windir%\system32\catsrvut.DLL
sfc /SCANFILE=%windir%\system32\CLBCatQ.DLL
net start "COM+ Event System"

--- End of the batch file ---

8. Run SFC / SCANNOW to scan for and restore corruptions in Windows system files.

Many issues can be fixed by installing the latest VSS hotfixes from Microsoft available at the following URLs:

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