Fixing ERROR_VOLSNAP_PREPARE_HIBERNATE (0x0000028F)

You're trying to put your Windows 10 or 11 PC to sleep or hibernate, and instead of a quiet shutdown, you get a blue screen with ERROR_VOLSNAP_PREPARE_HIBERNATE (0x0000028F). This usually hits after a Windows update—specifically the KB5023706 or similar cumulative updates from early 2024. I've seen it most on Dell laptops and some HP desktops with SSDs from Samsung or SK Hynix. The machine crashes right when it tries to snapshot the system volume for hibernation.

What's actually going wrong?

The Volume Snapshot Service (VSS) is responsible for taking a snapshot of your drives before hibernation. It's part of the volsnap.sys driver. When that driver can't prepare the snapshot—usually because of a corrupted volume or a driver mismatch after an update—you get the 0x0000028F error. It's not your hard drive failing, it's VSS choking.

The real culprit is often a stuck VSS writer or a corrupted shadow copy store. Think of it like this: Windows is trying to take a photo of your C: drive before bed, but the camera's lens cap is on. We need to pop that cap off.

Step-by-step fix

I'm going to give you three fixes in order of what usually works. Start with the first and only move to the next if it fails.

Fix 1: Clear VSS shadow copies and restart the service

1. Press Windows Key + X and select Windows PowerShell (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin). You'll see a User Account Control prompt—click Yes.
2. Type this command and press Enter:

   vssadmin delete shadows /all

   After running, you should see a message like "Successfully deleted 1 shadow copy" or similar. If you get "No shadow copies found", that's fine—move on.
3. Now restart the VSS service. Type:

   net stop vss && net start vss

   You'll see "The Volume Shadow Copy service is stopping" followed by "The Volume Shadow Copy service was started successfully."
4. Close the PowerShell window and try hibernating again. Press Windows Key + X, then Shut down or sign out > Hibernate.

Fix 2: Run chkdsk on the system volume

Sometimes a file system glitch prevents VSS from taking a snapshot. This fix checks your C: drive for errors.

1. Open an admin PowerShell again (same as step 1 in Fix 1).
2. Run:

   chkdsk C: /f /r

   You'll see a message: "Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)"
3. Type Y and press Enter.
4. Restart your computer. It will run chkdsk during boot—this takes 15 to 30 minutes depending on your drive size. Let it finish completely.
5. After Windows loads, test hibernation again.

Fix 3: Disable and re-enable hibernation

This rebuilds the hibernation file, which can fix corruption in the file itself.

1. Open admin PowerShell again.
2. Disable hibernation:

   powercfg /hibernate off

   There's no success message shown—that's normal.
3. Restart your computer.
4. After reboot, re-enable it:

   powercfg /hibernate on

   Again, no message.
5. Try hibernating now.

If it still fails

If none of those worked, you've got a deeper driver issue. Run sfc /scannow in an admin command prompt to repair system files. If that finds nothing, check your SSD firmware. Samsung 970 and 980 EVO drives had a bug that caused VSS errors under certain firmware versions—update via Samsung Magician.

Also, check if you have third-party backup software (like Acronis or Macrium) that hooks into VSS. Those programs can leave VSS writers in a bad state. Uninstall the backup software, reboot, and test hibernation before reinstalling it.

Finally, if you're on Windows 11 and you've installed the KB5023706 update, uninstall it temporarily. Go to Settings > Windows Update > Update history > Uninstall updates, find that update, uninstall it, reboot. If hibernation works after that, block that update until Microsoft releases a fix.