Performing a backup on a MS Windows operating system have been greatly improved with the introduction of the Volume Shadow Service.  On the server side, Windows 2003 introduced this new functionality for Microsoft.  There are several layers of features and services, but in summary, the VSS service allows for consistent, point-in-time access to files on disk.  For example, it allows access to a MS SQL database, Exchange database, or other “open” files on disk in a manner that allow for consistent backup and restore of those files (for more details on VSS, click)

Occasionally the VSS service will cause a problem.  I have a new VSS integrated backup system (R1Soft – best backup solution I have ever used) that works flawlessly on almost 40 systems, but there are 3 servers in particular that occasionally have problems.  These systems are being deprecated as their are multiple issues on these platforms (and they’ve been in service for 7 years).  There are several articles floating around online on how to address issues with VSS.  I have distilled the steps I perform into a quick process that works in getting the backups going again.

One common issue appears to be with removing and then installing competing VSS based backup agents.  We recently removed Backup Exec to switch to R1Soft, and some of the behaviors we experienced seemed to indicate a less than graceful uninstall process in Backup Exec caused issues with the VSS service.  From this our procedure going forward is to remove Backup Exec and reboot, then run through this process, and then install our new VSS backup agent, R1Soft.  I’d recommend exploring this process as an option nytime you are switching between VSS backup systems.

On to the steps… on the server where the VSS service is throwing errors to our backup agent, we perform the following (BTW – we have only seen this on 2003 Operating System).

- Click Start, click Run, type Regedit, and then click OK.
- Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\EventSystem\{26c409cc-ae86-11d1-b616-00805fc79216}\Subscriptions
- On the Edit menu, click Delete, and then click Yes to confirm that you want to delete the subkey (you are deleting the “Subscriptions” subkey)
- Close Registry Editor.

- Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK. (this opens a command prompt).  Type each of the following commands (easiest to cut and paste, and put into a batch file):

net stop “System Event Notification”
net stop “COM+ System Application”
net stop “Background Intelligent Transfer Service”
net stop “COM+ Event System”
net start “COM+ Event System”
net start “Background Intelligent Transfer Service”
net start “COM+ System Application”
net start “System Event Notification”
net stop “Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider”
net start “Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider”
net stop “Volume Shadow Copy”

- the Volume Shadow Copy service will likely NOT stop.  The command will return with “The Volume Shadow Copy service could not be stopped”.  You can verify this by opening the Services Control Panel applet.  It will be listed as “Stopping”.

- Press Ctrl-Alt-Del, and open Task Manager.  Select the “Processes” tab, check the “Show processes from all users” box (lower left corner).  Locate the vssvc.exe process.  Right click it, and select “End Process Tree”.

- You will now need to restart the Volume Shadow Copy service.  Go back to the command prompt window are type:

net start “Volume Shadow Copy”
You are done.

This has fixed our VSS issues 100% of the time.  Test it first for yourself to make sure it gives you the result you need.