Quiesce guest file system shows 'No' due to missing VMware Snapshot Provider Service on Windows when taking a Quiesced Snapshot

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• When taking a Quiesced Snapshot of a VM Quiesce guest file system shows as 'No' even though the Snapshot is succeeded. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Comparing between a Working VM and Non-Working VM, VMware Snapshot Provider Service is missing within services.msc 
  
  Working Setup: 
  
  
  
  Non-Working Setup: 
  

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 

VMware vSphere ESX

Cause

Issue happens because of VMware Snapshot Provider service missing within the Guest OS which might happen because of the following reasons: 

• Doing a major windows upgrade such as 2012 to 2019 can sometimes remove VMware services from Windows.
• Anti-virus or security software may remove VMware Tools services. 

Resolution

VMware Snapshot Provider service needs to be reregistered on the impacted VM by following the below steps:

• Login to the Guest OS VM and open CLI session with Administrator privileges. 
• Run the following command to reregister the VMware Snapshot Provider service - 
  
  "C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\vss\comreg.exe" -register "C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\Drivers\vss\VCBSnapshotProvider.dll" "VMware Snapshot Provider" "vmvss" "VMware Snapshot Provider"
  
  
• Open services.msc again to confirm that VMware Snapshot Provider service is registered again. 

Additional Information

VMware Snapshot Provider Service is missing post upgrading on Windows VM