Snapshots Were Found, They Were Outside of Your Allowed Context

Snapshots Were Found, But They Were Outside of Your Allowed Context

The Snapshots were found error is closely related to your Shadow Copies. Many inflicted users encountered this issue when they attempted to delete VSS Shadows. The error will present you with an error message – Snapshots were found, but they were outside of your allowed context.

According to what inflicted users report, we find the major culprit is Windows Backup rather than some third-party backup applications. People set their Windows Backup for regular work but the storage was filled with copies. When they reclaimed the storage by deleting the useless copies, the Snapshots were found error occurred.

Now, don’t worry. There are multiple methods designed to VSS shadows that you can’t delete. Try them one by one and some of them can resolve your concerns. Let’s see how to work on it!

Way 1: Manually Delete Windows Backup Shadow Copies

You can manually delete the Windows backup shadow copies. The process is easy to follow so you can try this way first.

Step 1: Type Control Panel in Search and open it.

Step 2: Click Backup and Restore (Windows 7) under System and Security.

Step 3: Click Manage space in the Backup section and then click View backups… under Data file backup.

Step 4: Then you can see your Windows Backup shadow copies are listed. Just locate the ones you want to delete and click Delete.

When a box jumps up to ask for your confirmation, please choose Delete again.

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Way 2: Manage Windows Backup Disk Space

Another method is to manage your Windows Backup disk space if you are unable to delete Shadow Copies.

Step 1: Open Backup and Restore (Windows 7) and click Manage space.

Step 2: Click Change settings… under System image and here, you can choose how Windows retains older system images.

If you choose Keep only the latest version of the system image and minimizing space used by backup, you can check the space that will be freed up.

Then based on the settings you configure, Windows Backup will start deleting copies automatically.

Way 3: Run the DiskShadow Command

The last method we will introduce is to run the DiskShadow command if you are a Windows Server user. Similar to the diskpart command, Diskshadow.exe is used to expose the functionality offered by the volume shadow copy Service (VSS). To run the command, you can do as follows.

Step 1: Type Command Prompt in Search and run it as an administrator.

Step 2: Type the following commands and press Enter after each of them.

• diskshadow
• list shadows all
• delete shadows <shadowID>

Remember to replace <shadowID> with the right one from the shadow list. If you want to delete all shadows, you can execute the command – delete shadows all.

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Bottom Line:

Does this article about Snapshots were found issue resolve your concerns? The above methods target different situations and you may try them one by one.