Introduction
Acronis software may give errors, freeze or produce other undesired effects when there are issues with parts of the computer environment it operates in:
- Hardware / firmware: disks, disk controllers, RAID controllers, network interface controllers, optical discs drives, tape devices, disk adapters, data and power cables, ports/connectors, other physical and virtual hardware used to store, transfer, manipulate data, RAM, firmware of the above devices, BIOS/UEFI, etc.
- Disk partitions, file systems: partition tables (e.g. MBR, GPT), disk partitions, disk volumes, file systems, Windows drivers
- Operating system, software: Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), VSS providers, VSS writers, Windows Registry configuration, Windows user accounts, permissions for files/folders, Windows Management Interface (WMI)
For example, you would want to check the environment if you see any of the following error messages in Acronis software:
- VSS-related errors:
- Unable to create volume snapshot
- Failed to read snapshot
- Failed to write the snapshot manager volume
- Disk-related errors:
- Failed to read from sector...
- Failed to read from disk...
- Input/Output (I/O) error
- Errors referencing \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\...
- (Various types of read and write errors)
- Cyclic redundancy check (CRC) error
- Other environment-related errors:
- Failed to enumerate directory
- WMI ExecQuery failed
- MFT bitmap corrupted
- The semaphore timeout period has expired
Solution
Diagnosing VSS-related issues
Acronis has developed a free tool that automates the process of checking the environment particularly for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)-related issues: Acronis VSS Doctor. It saves time on gathering and analyzing diagnostic information from various sources, including Windows Event Log, but it does not cover all possible root causes and applies to VSS-related issues only.
Diagnosing other issues, including disk-related ones
A more universal approach consists in checking Windows Event Log for issues with computer environment using Windows Event Viewer:
1. Open Windows Start Menu.
2. Type Event Viewer and press Enter:
If Windows Search does not find Event Viewer by name, press the combination of the button with Windows logo on keyboard and R, and run the command evenvwr.msc
3. Windows Event Viewer will open:
4. Navigate to Windows Logs - System:
5. Click Filter Current Log... on the right panel:
6. Mark Critical, Error and Warning checkboxes in the upper part of the window, click OK to apply the filter:
7. At this point you can click OK and review the recent warnings and errors, recorded in the System event log, and look for any information related to the issue observed in Acronis software. Pay special attention to events registered at the time the issue occurred, or just before that:
8. As there may be many unrelated events, you can narrow the search further, by applying the following suggested filter. Click Filter Current Log.. again:
9. Expand Event sources list:
10. Scroll through the list and mark the following items:
Short list (most popular sources of errors):
- VSS-related events in Windows log:
- VSS
- VSSAudit
- Major types of disk-related events in Windows log:
- disk
- Disk
- Ntfs
- Ntfs (Microsoft-Windows-Ntfs)
- Ntfs (Ntfs)
11. Click OK and review the filtered list of events. Your further actions will depend on what parts of the environment were reported to have issues and on their current status:
12. When troubleshooting a VSS or WMI-related issue, it is useful to also check warnings, errors and critical events under Windows Logs - Application section.
Further troubleshooting
Look up the detailed error/warning text, as well as the Event ID number on the Internet. Issues with environment are common and are likely to have a solution or a workaround already documented or described.
If you are not sure if the found errors and warnings could be the cause of the issue with Acronis software, contact Acronis Support with a system report and screenshots of the issue with Acronis, log of the operation in Acronis (if any) and the found records in Windows Event Log.