Discovery of another cause for the BA910 Volume Shadow Copy Error 0x8004230f – unexpected provider error

Hello World!

Aarthi here!

Linus and I have uncovered a very interesting cause for the BA910 issue. Certain Network Attached Storage devices can install their own software to make it seem as though they are a local drive when they are actually remote drives! The server where we made this discovery had a NetGear Storage Central 101 device which appeared to be a local drive but it was actually a remote drive. As such, whenever VSS tried to take a snapshot of the drive it would fail.

When we looked in the Windows Event Viewer, we found this error message and we would like to share it with you!

Event Type: Error
Event Source: VSS
Event Category: None
Event ID: 12293
Date: 29/08/2008
Time: 12:20:10 PM
User: N/A
Computer: BIANTES-SBS2003
Description:
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine details EndPrepareSnapshots({22924c31-b2d0-40f8-bc0c-869b63f85a06}) [hr = 0x8000ffff].

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 2d 20 43 6f 64 65 3a 20 – Code:
0008: 43 4f 52 53 4e 50 53 43 CORSNPSC
0010: 30 30 30 30 31 32 36 37 00001267
0018: 2d 20 43 61 6c 6c 3a 20 – Call:
0020: 43 4f 52 53 4e 50 53 43 CORSNPSC
0028: 30 30 30 30 31 32 34 38 00001248
0030: 2d 20 50 49 44 3a 20 20 – PID:
0038: 30 30 30 30 36 35 31 32 00006512
0040: 2d 20 54 49 44 3a 20 20 – TID:
0048: 30 30 30 30 34 33 39 36 00004396
0050: 2d 20 43 4d 44 3a 20 20 – CMD:
0058: 43 3a 5c 57 49 4e 44 4f C:\WINDO
0060: 57 53 5c 53 79 73 74 65 WS\Syste
0068: 6d 33 32 5c 76 73 73 76 m32\vssv
0070: 63 2e 65 78 65 20 20 20 c.exe
0078: 2d 20 55 73 65 72 3a 20 – User:
0080: 4e 54 20 41 55 54 48 4f NT AUTHO
0088: 52 49 54 59 5c 53 59 53 RITY\SYS
0090: 54 45 4d 20 20 20 20 20 TEM
0098: 2d 20 53 69 64 3a 20 20 – Sid:
00a0: 53 2d 31 2d 35 2d 31 38 S-1-5-18

So if you find that you are experiencing VSS issues with an “Unexpected Provider Error” 0x8004230f, check that all your local drives are infact local drives and not remote drives masquerading as local drives!