Welcome to the BackupAssist Blog

Chances are a great deal of your important data is generated or managed by a VSS application. You might have emails managed by an Exchange server or your customer accounts indexed by a SQL database. Knowing which applications use VSS will tell you the best way to back them up.

If an app uses VSS it can be backed up while it is running by our VSS Backup tool. We have specialist backups for SQL, Hyper-V and Exchange because these are the most popular VSS apps but any program with VSS can be backed up while open and running. (more…)

Re-registering The VSS Writers is the 2nd of 3 videos demonstrating how you can trouble-shoot VSS backup problems.

If you have viewed your event logs after a failed backup and discovered that you have VSS errors on your system such as a ‘Catastrophic failure’, your VSS writers may be unstable. Re-registering the VSS writers can often resolve these VSS related backup errors and return your system to a stable state.

Locating VSS Errors In Backup Logs is the 1st of 3 videos demonstrating how you can trouble-shoot VSS backup problems.

If you’re unfamiliar with VSS errors, issues related to imaging backups can be difficult to diagnose. Many of the VSS related error messages released by Microsoft can be ambiguous, requiring further investigation by the user.

Today, we’ll show you how to access and view 3 event logs that help you identify where VSS related backup errors may be occurring.
These are:

1. Operational Backup Log
2. Administrative Events Log
3. Hyper-V Backup Event Log

Hello World!

Aarthi here!

Linus and I have uncovered a very interesting cause for the BA910 issue. Certain Network Attached Storage devices can install their own software to make it seem as though they are a local drive when they are actually remote drives! The server where we made this discovery had a NetGear Storage Central 101 device which appeared to be a local drive but it was actually a remote drive. As such, whenever VSS tried to take a snapshot of the drive it would fail.

When we looked in the Windows Event Viewer, we found this error message and we would like to share it with you!

Event Type: Error
Event Source: VSS
Event Category: None
Event ID: 12293
Date: 29/08/2008
Time: 12:20:10 PM
User: N/A
Computer: BIANTES-SBS2003
Description:
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine details EndPrepareSnapshots({22924c31-b2d0-40f8-bc0c-869b63f85a06}) [hr = 0x8000ffff].

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 2d 20 43 6f 64 65 3a 20 – Code:
0008: 43 4f 52 53 4e 50 53 43 CORSNPSC
0010: 30 30 30 30 31 32 36 37 00001267
0018: 2d 20 43 61 6c 6c 3a 20 – Call:
0020: 43 4f 52 53 4e 50 53 43 CORSNPSC
0028: 30 30 30 30 31 32 34 38 00001248
0030: 2d 20 50 49 44 3a 20 20 – PID:
0038: 30 30 30 30 36 35 31 32 00006512
0040: 2d 20 54 49 44 3a 20 20 – TID:
0048: 30 30 30 30 34 33 39 36 00004396
0050: 2d 20 43 4d 44 3a 20 20 – CMD:
0058: 43 3a 5c 57 49 4e 44 4f C:\WINDO
0060: 57 53 5c 53 79 73 74 65 WS\Syste
0068: 6d 33 32 5c 76 73 73 76 m32\vssv
0070: 63 2e 65 78 65 20 20 20 c.exe
0078: 2d 20 55 73 65 72 3a 20 – User:
0080: 4e 54 20 41 55 54 48 4f NT AUTHO
0088: 52 49 54 59 5c 53 59 53 RITY\SYS
0090: 54 45 4d 20 20 20 20 20 TEM
0098: 2d 20 53 69 64 3a 20 20 – Sid:
00a0: 53 2d 31 2d 35 2d 31 38 S-1-5-18

So if you find that you are experiencing VSS issues with an “Unexpected Provider Error” 0x8004230f, check that all your local drives are infact local drives and not remote drives masquerading as local drives!