CoNetrix

Blog: Volume Shadow Copy

We had an issue last week where backups of an Exchange 2007 server began to fail after we removed the EMC Replication Manager & EMC Solutions Enabler apps. The errors that we began to see in the Application log like this:

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: A critical component required by the Volume Shadow Copy service is not registered.  This might happened if an error occurred during Windows setup or during installation of a Shadow Copy provider.  The error returned from CoCreateInstance on class with CLSID {bd902507-4491-4001-acdd-a540a2cad34b} and Name HWPRV is [0x80040154].

I went through the process described here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940032  to reregister all the VSS stuff, but it didn’t work. After digging into the VSS CLI, I was seeing the following returned from issuing a “vssadmin list providers” [more]

Provider name: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
   Provider type: System
   Provider Id: {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5} 
   Version: 1.0.0.7

Provider name: 'ERM VSS Provider'
   Provider type: Hardware
   Provider Id: {e929a027-cf8c-47bf-90a3-cd4241c7cace}
   Version: 1.0

It appeared as if the EMC VSS provider was not removed when I uninstalled the software. The online knowledgebase for EMC, said to fix it, re-install the apps, then start the VSS service, then uninstall the apps again suggesting that the provider would not have been removed if the service wasn’t running at the time the apps were uninstalled. I had a really hard time getting that stuff installed to start with so I didn’t want to start that again. I did some testing on a VM and found that I could remove the provider by just removing the registry key which matched the Provider Id listed by the vssadmin list providers command.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Providers\{e929a027-cf8c-47bf-90a3-cd4241c7cace}

After restarting the VSS service one time, the vssadmin list providers command provided this output

Provider name: 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0'
   Provider type: System
   Provider Id: {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}
   Version: 1.0.0.7

Success!! This could possibly be a problem and the fix could work with any applications that insert 3rd party VSS providers.

Networking, Backup, Volume Shadow Copy, Windows 2003 Server, EMC, backup,
 

While working on a task to upgrade the hard drives on a Windows 2002 SBS machine. I installed Acronis in order to create an image of the C & D drive then recover it to the new larger hard drive. I recovered the image to the new drives and finished getting everything back online.

I decided to uninstall Acronis which showed to uninstall just fine using it’s uninstall. After backup ran that night it had Volume Shadow Copy errors. I checked and found that the Microsoft VSS writers where not accessible. I ran “VSSadmin / list writers” which showed there was no writers available. After researching I found that others who uninstalled Acronis 9.1 had the same issue. I could not find a solution that worked for anyone. I found an article (linked to below) that has a list of DLL’s that Micrisoft Premier Support recommends to reregister. I reregistered the DLL's and after a reboot there were still no VSS writers available.  [more]

I then decided to run System File Checker which is built into Windows XP and Server 2003. I used “sfc.exe /scannow” and let it run. After which I reregistered the DLL’s like before. This time when I ran “VSSadmin /list writers” all the writers were listed. I went back to Backup Exec and was able to select “Shadow?Copy?Components” and “System State”, which I could not before.

Link to information about SFC.exe   -   http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310747
Link to list of DLL’s to reregister  -   http://backupassist.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=28

Networking, Volume Shadow Copy, Windows 2003 Server, Acronis,