Backup - AOFO: Initialization failure on: "System?State". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). V-79-10000-11226 - VSS Snapshot error

Backup - AOFO: Initialization failure on: "System?State". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

V-79-10000-11226 - VSS Snapshot error. The Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshot provider selected returned: "Unexpected provider error". Ensure that all provider services are enabled and can be started. Check the Windows Event Viewer for details.


Had this error start occurring with BUE 2010 R3 on my backup execution server itself. When I ran "vssadmin list writers" several writers were in an error & timed out [7] state. Issue was caused by there not being enough free space on the system volume to include a VSS snapshot of itself because the feature set of this server has grown so large including WDS, and iSCSI target.

Solution was to move the storage location for snapshots for the system volume to the C: drive.