Getting Past VSS Error 80042316 from DriveImage XML

Mark Berry March 24, 2008

I’m using Runtime Software’s free DriveImage XML to back up several XP machines over a network to Windows 2003 server. Scheduled tasks run DriveImage XML in command-line mode and are set to
try VSS before drive locking. Another scheduled task collects logs and emails them to me.

Today I noticed that one of the backups did not complete. When I tried to run the backup interactively, DriveImage XML told me that it “Could not initialize Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)” and that the error code was 80042316. The Volume Shadow Copy service was running. I tried stopping and starting the service and re-running the backup, but it still could not proceed.

Some Google research turned up the meaning of 80042316 as “another snapshot creation is in progress. Please retry later your snapshot creation.” However to the best of my knowledge there are no other backups or other VSS-aware processes running. 

I thought perhaps the recent change from Trend CS 3.6 to NOD 32 2.7 might have caused a problem, but DriveImage XML completed fine on several other machines running NOD32.

Finally I remembered that there is a command-line utility to look into VSS on a machine. I typed

vssadmin list shadows

at a command prompt and it showed that there is a shadow copy on some kind of virtual volume (\\?\Volume{2eb5f062-fd3d-11d8-8bb5-806d6172696f}\). Stopping and starting the Volume Shadow Copy service did not remove the shadow copy.

Maybe this is a remnant from an old backup? I don’t know how to directly delete shadow copies under Windows XP, but let’s see if a reboot helps…

Bingo! After the reboot, the “vssadmin list shadows” command showed “No shadow copies present in the system,” and DriveImage XML was able to create a new shadow copy and do the backup.

Not Fixed

Alas, when DriveImage XML completed and exited, I still had a volume shadow copy on the volume, and the next time I ran DriveImage XML, it  gave me the same message but a slightly different error code:  80042317. Google isn’t so helpful in finding a description for 80042317. But rebooting the machine again killed the shadow copy and let DriveImage XML run, so I’m assuming it’s the same issue.

Bummer! So why can’t DriveImage XML release/delete its shadow copies on this machine? The Microsoft storage team lists three recommended hotfixes for VSS in this blog entry, but they are all for Windows Server 2003, not XP.

Excluding the C:\System Volume Information folder (where volume shadow copies are stored, I believe) from NOD32 didn’t help.

Excluding dixml.exe (the DriveImage XML executable) from NOD32 didn’t help.

I’ll update this if I find a solution (other than rebooting the machine after every backup!).