VSSAdmin List Writers is Empty

Hello,

Quick post to remind myself of how to fix volume shadow copy having no writers. Turns out this is a common problem when using the newsid utility on templated servers/computers. The fix is relatively simple.

1. Stop the Microsoft Shadow Copy Provider & Volume Shadow Copy Service
2. Export the contents of the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\EventSystem key to a .reg file (as a backup).
3. Delete the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\EventSystem\{26c409cc-ae86-11d1-b616-00805fc79216}\Subscriptions key. (Just delete the Subscriptions subkey; leave the EventClasses key.)
4. Restart the server.
5. Run the “VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS” command.

Thanks to Rhys Winter on his post in technet.