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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Solved: Error Snapshotting Volumes (DISK2VHD)

Windows XP
I encountered the error "Error Snapshotting Volumes" while using the DISK2VHD tool to virtualize an old XP dev environment. The error is DISK2VHD's own description of an error that occurs with the shadow copy features of XP. This error is not confined to the DISK2VHD tool, and may occur with anything that relies on the usage of the shadow copy features. Most often, these tools are backup programs.

Fortunately, this is quite a well defined problem and Microsoft has a knowledge base article detailing the cause and resolution. The article goes into more depth about the symptoms and cause of the problem and does not actually mention the error message that I received from DISK2VHD, but it is in fact the root cause of the  error and the resolution steps discussed solved my error on the first attempt.

Here is the chewed version from the knowledge base article:
  1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
  2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
  3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\Catalogs
  4. Click the registry subkey for each program that is listed under the Catalogs registry subkey. For each registry subkey, verify whether the Location registry entry exists.
  5. If the Location registry entry is missing for a selected program, verify whether the program is still installed.
  6. If the program is not installed, right-click the registry subkey for the program under the Catalogs subkey, and then clickDelete. If the program is installed, correct the location information.
  7. Restart the computer, and then use Windows Backup Utility to test this problem.
In my case, it was Visio that was previously uninstalled, but still had a registry entry that was running amok with my virtualization task. Simply removing the rogue registry entry got me on my way again and finally I have the dev environment virtualized.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow!!! DayneO, great find and fix. I had the same issue on an old XP box I wanted to Visualized which was driving me crazy. Did exactly what you suggested and bomb it fix the problem....I didn't even have to restart the computer, I started the disk2vhd program and it started to do it's thing.

Thanks a lot

Anonymous said...

Thanks a tonne mate. Tried all different sorts of registry cleaners but nothing worked. Came across your article and gave it my last chance and it worked.

It was the Visio entry playing up on me.

Thanks once again!

jv said...

Very good. Worked perfectly for Disk2VHD which uses VSS to copy.

jv said...

Excellent - works fine for Disk2VHD which uses VSS to snapshot the disks.

Unknown said...

Worked like magic, didn't even require a reboot.

Much appreciated.

Anonymous said...

Me, too Thanks for the solution, again VISIO was the problem.

Anonymous said...

It worked for me too. I had 2 computers with the VISIO problem :-)

Anonymous said...

Brilliant catch! It was Visio for me too.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant. Visio problem for me too.

Anonymous said...

Tanks.. this resolved my problem too.

Ram Sumanth.Ch

Anonymous said...

Great solution. Visio too

Get-Help Joe said...

Same here - fixed me right up. So many thanks, so little time. :)

Get-Help Joe said...

same here, fixed me right up

Anonymous said...

Fixed my problem too - THANKS !

altecsole said...

Many thanks. This fixed the problem for me when snapshotting XP. It was a Visio entry in the registry too.

Anonymous said...

Excelent, if not exists Catalogs key, only create (without subkeys).

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

This works as of 2020 on Win7 Home. A rogue Visio subkey needed to be deleted, as described.

Anonymous said...

Same problem with visio. Thanks!!!