Sometimes the VSS writers are in a failed state and they need to be restarted. Below is a list of which server goes with which writer so you know what to restart. ##Important## take a screen cap of all of your Vss writers before you start. open a command prompt with elevated permissions “run as administrator” and then type vssadmin list writers.
Sometimes after you restart one of the failed writers no writers show up when you check them again. Just go through the list one more time and restart the services and the writers come back.
VSS Writers and Corresponding Service Table
| VSS Writer | Service Name | Service Display Name |
| ADAM $instanceName Writer | ADAM_$instanceName | $instanceName |
| ASR Writer | VSS | Volume Shadow Copy |
| BITS Writer | BITS | Background Intelligent Transfer Service |
| Certificate Authority | CertSvc | Active Directory Certificate Services |
| COM+ REGDB Writer | VSS | Volume Shadow Copy |
| DFS Replication service writer | DFSR | DFS Replication |
| DHCP Jet Writer | DHCPServer | DHCP Server |
| FRS Writer | NtFrs | File Replication |
| FSRM writer | srmsvc | File Server Resource Manager |
| IIS Config Writer | AppHostSvc | Application Host Helper Service |
| IIS Metabase Writer | IISADMIN | IIS Admin Service |
| Microsoft Exchange Replica Writer | MSExchangeRepl | Microsoft Exchange Replication Service |
| Microsoft Exchange Writer | MSExchangeIS | Microsoft Exchange Information Store |
| Microsoft Hyper-V VSS Writer | vmms | Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management |
| MSMQ Writer (MSMQ) | MSMQ | Message Queuing |
| MSSearch Service Writer | WSearch | Windows Search |
| NPS VSS Writer | EventSystem | COM+ Event System |
| NTDS | NTDS | Active Directory Domain Services |
| OSearch VSS Writer | OSearch | Office SharePoint Server Search |
| OSearch14 VSS Writer | OSearch14 | SharePoint Server Search 14 |
| OSearch15 VSS Writer | OSearch15 | SharePoint Server Search 15 |
| Registry Writer | VSS | Volume Shadow Copy |
| Shadow Copy Optimization Writer | VSS | Volume Shadow Copy |
| SharePoint Services Writer | SPWriter | Windows SharePoint Services VSS Writer |
| SMS Writer | SMS_SITE_VSS_WRITER | SMS_SITE_VSS_WRITER |
| SPSearch VSS Writer | SPSearch | Windows SharePoint Services Search |
| SPSearch4 VSS Writer | SPSearch4 | SharePoint Foundation Search V4 |
| SqlServerWriter | SQLWriter | SQL Server VSS Writer |
| System Writer | CryptSvc | Cryptographic Services |
| TermServLicensing | TermServLicensing | Remote Desktop Licensing |
| WDS VSS Writer | WDSServer | Windows Deployment Services Server |
| WIDWriter | WIDWriter | Windows Internal Database VSS Writer |
| WINS Jet Writer | WINS | Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) |
| WMI Writer | Winmgmt | Windows Management Instrumentation |