QBR Knowledge base HOW TO RE-REGISTER VSS DLL BINARIES (32 BIT) SCOPE The command vssadmin list writers does not produce an output then following commands will help to re-register the VSS Service's associated DLL binaries. There may be other reasons in which QBR support may also ask to run this batch file besides the inability to list the VSS Writers of the OS. One of the most common causes for needing to perform these steps is that there has been a conflicting VSS-aware application being run on the protected machine. Please ensure that any other VSS-aware process is removed, including scheduled shadow copies in the OS, this will ensure further long term stability and reliability for the SnapToVM Agent to perform. Please note this will only work on 32bit systems, if you have a 64 bit system there is a separate article on this KB for you. TO RE-REGISTER VSS BINARIES AND SERVICES Run the following commands from within cmd.exe running with Administrative privileges cd /d %windir%\system32 net stop vss net stop swprv regsvr32 ole32.dll regsvr32 oleaut32.dll regsvr32 /i eventcls.dll <--This will fail to register on Vista & 2008 and newer which is OK regsvr32 vss_ps.dll vssvc /register regsvr32 /i swprv.dll regsvr32 es.dll <-- This will fail to register on Vista & 2008 and newer which is OK regsvr32 stdprov.dll regsvr32 vssui.dll <-- This only applies to server2003\server2008 regsvr32 msxml.dll <---This may not be installed and may fail to register which is OK regsvr32 msxml3.dll <---This may not be installed and may fail to register which is OK regsvr32 msxml4.dll <---This may not be installed and may fail to register which is OK Please reboot the machine if you have any trouble testing the VSS with the VShadow tool below. Alternatively copy the following code into a file and name it VSS32.bat and run it with Administrative Priviledges QBR Knowledge base cd /d %windir%\system32 net stop vss net stop swprv regsvr32 ole32.dll regsvr32 oleaut32.dll regsvr32 /i eventcls.dll regsvr32 vss_ps.dll vssvc /register regsvr32 /i swprv.dll regsvr32 es.dll regsvr32 stdprov.dll regsvr32 vssui.dll regsvr32 msxml.dll regsvr32 msxml3.dll regsvr32 msxml4.dll TEST VSS WITH THE MICROSOFT VSHADOW TOOL 1. First download the VShadow tool from Microsoft. For Windows 2000: VSS Is not available therefore VShadow is not available. For Windows XP and Server 2003: VShadow can be obtained by running the update for Microsoft Windows SDK by clicking here. Once installed you will have a 288KB sized VShadow.exe typically stored in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\VSSSDK72\TestApps\vshadow\bin\release-xp\vshadow.exe" For Windows Vista & Server 2008: VShadow can be obtained by running the update for Microsoft Windows SDK by clicking here Once installed you will have a 300KB sized VShadow.exe typically stored in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\" For Windows 7 & Server 2008r2: VShadow can be obtained by running the update for Microsoft Windows SDK by clicking here. Once installed you will have a 340KB sized VShadow.exe typically stored in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0\" 2. Once installed you will have a 288KB sized VShadow.exe which can be searched for within %windir%\* 3. Once located please copy VShadow.exe to %windir%\system32\ 4. Once this has been copied to your Window's System32 directory the vshadow command can be more easily run at the command prompt. 5. Before leveraging vshadow we should stop the VSS-related services that most likely are running, the following services should be stopped and set to Automatic startup state in services.msc: QBR Knowledge base Background Intelligent Transfer Service Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy Requestor Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider MS Software Shadow Copy Provider SQL Server VSS Writer Volume Shadow Copy 6. The syntax for this command is as follows: vshadow VolumeList 7. On the PC in the screenshot below we see a C:, D:, F:, and G: volume. The C: volume is the only hard disk on the machine so the VShadow syntax is shown as such. 8. If there was a hypothetical D: volume as well here the command would be: VShadow C: D: 9. If the VShadow tool fails to take a shadow copy then please try to reboot the system. .