Ran into an interesting issue.. I was trying to convert a Windows XP VM from xen to vmware using vCenter Converter Standalone. Conversion will fail in 10 seconds with Status “Failed: Unable to create a VSS snapshot of the source volume(s) Error Code: 2147754776 (0x80042318)..
Upon examining Application event log – I saw two different VSS errors for every attempt I made
Error:12302
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: An internal inconsistency was detected in trying to contact shadow copy service writers. Please check to see that the Event Service and Volume Shadow Copy Service are operating properly.
and
Error: 5013
Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Shadow Copy writer ContentIndexingService called routine RegQueryValueExW which failed with status 0x80070002 (converted to 0x800423f4).
upon running
vssadmin list writers on target I received Error: 0x8000FFFF. Inconsitency have been detected. That’s it nothing else.
Upon researching further I came across following link which spells out solution
http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/p/266/991.aspx
End user had uninstalled visio from the machine so to reslove this issue I had to delete visio key located under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ContentIndex\Catalogs
It is also vaguely documented on Microsoft knowledge base
Jaggubhai's Weblog 