When I reviewed our server backups that take place over the weekend I noticed that one of our SQL servers failed which was odd. In the servers event log it showed two errors relating to VSS… Event ID 12292 and 11. Seeing that SQL relies on VSS for backups I went to check the snapshots under the disk properties. Instead of seeing the shadow copy volumes and properties I saw an error:

“Volume Shadow Copy Service information: The COM Server with CLSID {65ee1dba-8ff4-4a58-ac1c-3470ee2f376a} and name SW_PROV cannot be started. [0x80070422]“  

Because this server is a production server restarting was out of the question so I went and tried to just restart the service, that didn’t work. I listed the VSS providers by running “vssadmin list writers” but all showed no errors. After some research, aka. Google, I found the 0×80070422 code in the 12292 event ID means ERROR_SERVICE_DISABLED. The
service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. After digging further this is what I found and worked like a charm with no interuptions or reboots… 
Open a command prompt, enter “regsvr32 /i %windir%\system32\swprv.dll”, and press ENTER to register the provider.
Then restart the Volume Shadow Copy service, and run DCOMCNFG and make sure
you can see the “Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service software provider”
application under the list of apps on the local computer under the DCOM
Config folder.

This worked for me but you may need to go further if this did’t help.

I have seen other DLL’s that have known to cause similar / other problems if not registered and should be re-registered if the above DLL does not resolve the issue:

regsvr32 /I eventcls.dll
regsvr32 vss_ps.dll
regsvr32 vssui.dll
regsvr32 msxml.dll
regsvr32 msxml3.dll
regsvr32 msxml4.dll

If SQL is installed, then also re-register this DLL:

regsvr32 Sqlvdi.dll

VSS can be a good thing… if it only worked “ALL” the time.

Posted in Microsoft