Backup Fails at VSS Creation

[deees]

My computer has multiple M2 drive support. In addition to other SSD's, there are 2 x 1TB NVME drives.

These drives have Windows 11 and Windows 10 partitions. The second drive is a clone of the first drive. (Not RAID, they are stand-alone with periodic volume copies using Paragon Hard Disk Manager.)

Currently, I'm in the process of transferring the programs and functions from the Windows 10 OS image to the Windows 11 image. This means that I occasionally need to boot the Windows 10 to access the programs that haven't been migrated to Windows 11 yet.

I have a backup job that is scheduled to run at logon to backup my user profile documents.

Recently, I noticed that it was failing. The backup job hangs at the VSS processing step: "Initializing VSS technology, please wait ..." Checking the Windows System Event log, it reports that the Volume Shadow Service has stopped unexpectedly.

The Windows 10 OS can create Shadow Copies manually. The file system has been checked using Windows and Paragon file systems tools.

Checking the diagnostic logs capture by the Paragon Logs Collector Tool, the "C_\Windows\Logs\Paragon Software\VssRequester\<YYYY-MM-DD.log>" only contains the beginning entry:
2023-03-18 08:09:49.825,I, 13352,VssRequester, Enter CreateVSSSnapshot(). m_BackupType = 1; r_includedVolumes = "\\?\Volume{17213ef6-a138-46be-66f7-2f82fea6c300}\ "; r_includedWriters: r_excludedWriters:

There is no "Snapshot has been successfuly created." entry.

Interesting, because the second drive has a fairly recent, (1 month old), clone of the Windows 10 image, I booted that image to see if a recent Windows update might be causing this behavior?

I ran the same backup job and it succeeded. I updated the Windows patches and reran the backup. It also succeeded.

At this point I decided it by be simpler to copy the working OS image from the second drive back to the first drive to solve the problem. After doing that, I ran the backup job. It failed in the same way!

Again, Windows VSS Snapshots work. Paragon Backups via Hard Drive Manager don't.

Has anyone else experiences this?

Is there a way to generate more verbose logging the backup process, particularly the VSS process?

I have submitted a support ticket with Technical Support, but don't expect a response for some time.

[deees]

As an update, I’m working with Paragon tach support on this problem. Currently, they don’t seem to have a solution, but I’m willing to wait.
I noticed an error in the Application event log that referenced both vsssvc.exe and bcd.dll:

Faulting application name: vssvc.exe, version: 10.0.19041.1741, time stamp: 0x77580962
Faulting module name: bcd.dll, version: 10.0.19041.546, time stamp: 0x1a78703d
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000004085
Faulting process id: 0x7564
Faulting application start time: 0x01d96a077ae37f3f
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\system32\vssvc.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\bcd.dll
Report Id: 61abb2ea-0a3d-4925-b8e2-a032e117cfc3
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Searching for those messages online, I found multiple forum posts from users experiencing problems performing backup with third-party applications. Most were for Acronis software, but one also had failures with Paragon backup.

The consensus was that it is caused by a failed Windows update and is related to permissions for the registry key: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{2593f8b9-4eaf-457c-b68a-50f6b8ea6b54}.
After I modified the permissions on that key I was able to perform backup with Paragon. Unfortunately, after rebooting, the fix was no longer effective.

If the VSS errors are cause by a failed Windows update, Paragon isn’t responsible for fixing it. However, since it renders their software unusable, they should release a hotfix that either repairs the broken permissions or alters their backup software to compensates for it.
The only solution the other forums users used to fix their problem was to reinstall Windows.

If anyone on this forum knows how to repair this issue, please post the instructions.

[Gert]

Try it here

Acronis VSS Doctor

Free tool for diagnosing and repairing Volume
Shadow Copy Service issues

https://www.acronis.com/id-id/products/vss-doctor/

[deees]

Try it here

Acronis VSS Doctor

Free tool for diagnosing and repairing Volume
Shadow Copy Service issues

https://www.acronis.com/id-id/products/vss-doctor/

Thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately, that tool doesn't find any problems or fix my issue.

Acronis users with my problem also didn't have success with it.