Remove Unwanted VSS Provider

Written By Tami Sutcliffe (Super Administrator)

Updated at March 31st, 2021

To resolve this issue, you need to determine what unnecessary VSS providers are present, remove them and revert to the previous status (if necessary). 

Open an elevated Command Prompt and type

vssadmin list providers

After you get the list of providers, identify the unnecessary ones. now got to the Registry

1.  Open Regedit
2.  Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\Providers\
3.  Expand Providers and you should see three keys: Enum, and two GUID’s (Long strings of letters and numbers).
4.  Click on the top GUID in the list and in the right-hand pane the Default string should have the name of the provider. If not check the other GUID.
5.  Once you find the right GUID export the whole GUID and export it so you can revert the operation if needed.
6.  Delete the unnecessary provider GUID subkey and close the registry
7.  Open Windows services and restart the “Volume Shadow Copy” service. It may be stopped to begin with, that’s okay.
8.  Check and see if the provider is gone from: vssadmin list providers
9.  (if needed) Reboot the server when next possible.
10.  (if needed) If for some reason you need to revert to the initial state, import the previously exported registry subkey and bounce the Volume Shadow Copy service