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VSS Error: Couldn’t take snapshot. The shadow copy provider had an unexpected error while trying to process the specified operation

Common VSS Related Errors:

0x800423f4: The writer experienced a non-transient error.

0x8004230f: The shadow copy provider had an unexpected error while trying to process the specified operation.

0x80042336: The writer experienced a partial failure. Check the component level error state for more information.

  1. Check the VSS writers' status in an elevated command prompt. If any writer is in a failed state, you may need to restart the service or, reboot the system.
    From an elevated command prompt or PowerShell run:
vssadmin list writers

This will provide an list of all VSS writers on your PC. You want to check the Last Error and State items.

  1. The value of Last Error should always be No Error, if the status is different you have a problem writer.
  2. The value of State should be show [1] Stable.
  3. A simple reboot of the PC may resolve this problem. If the issue continues after a reboot, it could indicate a larger issue within the PC.
  1. Check for disk space issues: Ensure that there's enough free disk space on the volumes being backed up and the volume where the shadow copies are stored.
  2. Check that you have  the VSS writers installed and working.
    If any provider is causing an issue, try reinstalling or updating the provider.
    From an elevated command prompt or PowerShell run:
vssadmin list providers


If you have any VSS providers listed other than Microsoft, you should disable them.

  1. Shadow storage on the source drives is not configured or not large enough. The shadow storage size can be checked and manually changed through an elevated command prompt or PowerShell:

To check the current shadow storage limits:

vssadmin list shadowstorage


To change the shadow storage limit:

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=X: /On=X: /Maxsize=XX%

Example Usages:
vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=900MB
vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=D: /MaxSize=UNBOUNDED
vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=20%

  1. Check the Windows Event Logs for error messages or warnings that might be helpful. You can use the Windows Event Viewer or we have provided a PowerShell command below.
    This command will filter events with the source "VSS" or "VolSnap" and displays those with a level of 'Error' or 'Warning':
Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{LogName='System'; ProviderName=@('VSS', 'VolSnap'); Level=@(2,3)} | Format-Table TimeCreated, ProviderName, Id, LevelDisplayName, Message -AutoSize
  • Microsoft's VSS is only able to perform one snapshot at a time. If a snapshot is already in progress when your backup job starts, then the backup job could fail. Stopping and restarting the Volume Shadow Copy service can resolve this problem. To do this, open an elevated command prompt or PowerShell window and run the following commands:
net stop vss
net start vss


If restarting the VSS service with the 'net stop vss & net start vss' shown above does not resolve the issue, a server reboot has also been known to clean up the snapshot manager correctly.

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