The writer operation failed because of a time-out between the Freeze and Thaw event. (VSS_E_WRITERERROR_TIMEOUT)

Error

[com.ahsay.afc.microsoft.MSExchangeExpt] The writer operation failed because of a time-out between the Freeze and Thaw event.  (VSS_E_WRITERERROR_TIMEOUT)

Cause

The exchange VSS writer has gone into a inconsistent state. If this issue occurs regularly it may indicate an underlying hardware issue or lack of resources (ie. system RAM).

The output of vssadmin list writers may look similar to:

Writer name: ‘Microsoft Exchange Writer’
Writer Id: {76fe1ac4-15f7-4bcd-987e-8e1acb462fb7}
Writer Instance Id: {088e9271-a67d-4bd4-82c6-b4b20c59fff4}
State: [9] Failed
Last error: Timed out

Resolution

  1. Check to determine whether the Exchange VSS writer state is showing as “stable”. If the writer is not stable, check the event log for hardware/disk events
  2. Restart the Microsoft Information Store service
  3. Run vssadmin list writers again and confirm that the exchange VSS writer is now stable