Volume Shadow Copy Service Error: Unexpected Error LookupAccountName

I ran into a fun problem the other day when I was trying to do some patching to my production servers. I was using the backup state tool to make sure that if the patches broke my machine I would be able to get the system back to working order as quickly as possible. Well when trying to run the backup tool I kept getting a strange error saying the Volume Shadow Copy Service couldn't run and it gave me this error:

Volume Shadow Copy Service Error: Unexpected Error LookupAccountName

Come to find out that it had something to do with SharePoint 2007; I wasn't entirely shocked to find that SharePoint broke something on my server. I found the fix after some research and trying some different things, it's a registry edit to delete an account that was once used by SharePoint 2007 and now isn't.

So what caused this problem is one that probably plagues a lot of people with SharePoint 2007 in a farm environment, like I have setup. Basically what happens is you have a service account (in my case a user account) running your SharePoint 2007 farm and when you decide to change the service account (or delete it from AD in my case because the user left the company) it starts throwing this error when you try anything associated with the VSS service, in my case the backup state tool.

I tried a few quick fixes, I rebooted the server, I also tried to start the VSS service manually, neither of these fixes worked. I also tried to setup the VSS service to run under my user account but it still kept telling me that the VSS was running under this other user account (the guy who had left over a year ago). I also tried setting the service to automatic startup and rebooted the server but it still failed with the same error code.

So to fix the problem I had to remove the stored account for VSS from the registry, you can do this by following these steps:

1 - Click Start
2 - Click Run
3 - Type Regedit
4 - Open to Key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\VssAccessControl
5 - Delete the Key with the user name in the error
6 - Reboot your server
7 - Test the VSS service (It should start now with no problems)

This is what finally fixed my VSS service and I was finally able to run the backup state tool and then patch my server. There are many different things that use the VSS service so I am sure many people run into this error and I hope this helps you to fix it.