Delete Orphaned VSS Task

I recently removed a volume from my SBS 2008 server, but I forgot to turn off shadow copies beforehand. Now I’m getting VSS EventID 7001 in the Application event log:  “VssAdmin: Unable to create a shadow copy: Either the specified volume was not found or it is not a local volume.” Apparently VSS is still trying to create shadow copies of the missing volume. How do I stop it?

Shadow Copies are created by standard tasks in Task Scheduler, but figuring out which task is no longer needed can be tricky. In many cases, the task will refer to the volume name, not the drive letter. How do you know which volume names are still in use? Try one of these handy commands:  vssadmin list volumes or mountvol.

vssadmin list volumes (includes fixed disks only):

VSS Task 2

mountvol (includes floppy and optical drives):

VSS Task 3

By comparing the listed (active) volume names to the volumes in Task Scheduler that have ShadowCopyVolume tasks, you can determine which of the scheduled tasks is the “orphan” and delete it.

The Easy Way

However there is an easier way. The second part of the 7001 message tells you the command that is failing, in my case:

Command-line: ‘C:\Windows\system32\vssadmin.exe Create Shadow /AutoRetry=15 /For=\\?\Volume{6113940d-a253-11df-9bbb-00155d26660b}\’.

Go to Task Scheduler, find the corresponding ShadowCopyVolume task, and right-click to delete it:

VSS Task 1

4 thoughts on “Delete Orphaned VSS Task

  1. Darron Foot

    Thank You – much appreciated – I have this exact same error and I was going in circles thinking it was a VSS writer error – I never thought about VSS Volume.

  2. Florisz

    Thank you! That simple! Never thought about the task scheduler task(s)..

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