Server 2012 R2 FSRM Event ID 8197 Error: GetVolumeNameForVolumeMountPoint, 0x800700001, incorrect function

Question

I found next to no information about this error with respect to Server 2012. There is a good deal of information out about this error with Server 2003 with a update package fix from Microsoft as well as notes about how the error has been resolved for Server 2008 and 2008 R2 but nothing for 2012.

On both Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2 (edition doesn't matter) after installing the File System Resource Manager (FSRM) role an error occurs:

Event ID 8197
Source: SRMSVC
File Server Resource Manger Service error: Unexpected error. 
Error-specific details:
Error: GetVolumeNameForVolumeMountPoint, 0x800700001, incorrect function

This error also occurs on every restart as well as after the service has been restarted (specifically 30 seconds after it has been started). This error was happening on two Dell servers: PowerEdge R720 and PowerEdge R620.

The first thing I discovered was that this only occurs while using UEFI. There is no error when the server is using standard BIOS. I could have stopped there and just stuck with BIOS but I didn't want to lose out on any of the new features of UEFI and server 2012.

Initially, I assumed this was an issue with Dell's UEFI implementation since it occurred on both of my new servers as well as in a VM running on a DELL PowerEdge ESX host. However, I was able to reproduce this error with another VM running on non-Dell hardware. This means the problem is with Microsoft. Installing FSRM on Server 2008 R2 on UEFI does not produce the error, only 2012 & 2012 R2 do, narrowing this down to a Server 2012 problem with UEFI.

I have not seen anything negative come of this error aside from the glaring red x in event viewer. I fully tested FSRM functionality and found everything seemed to work without a hitch. Unfortunately, I'm not the type to just ignore an unknown persistent error so I spent a whooole lot of time trying to get to the bottom of this. I was highly motivated to get this figured out because the one hit I had on google with this error and Server 2012 mentioned vanishing volumes on restarts (something I didn't want popping up on me down the road).

Answer 1

After a good month of going back and forth with Dell and Microsoft I received an "answer" about this error. Here was Microsoft's response:

Our escalation engineer has debugged the issue and found this is a by-design behavior on EFI system. We have reproduced this issue on both of the hardware machine & VM.

We would like to explain that we can safely ignore this event. The error message happens when FSRM service checks the system partition. On EFI system, the EFI system partition is a FAT system which will fail with the function call GetVolumeNameForVolumeMountPoint(). This is normal and the FSRM service is expecting this will fail on EFI system in its internal code. The error message is just logged for information purpose for such situation and that is why you can safely ignore it.

Personally, I think this is a go away response. I replied back reminding them that this does not occur with Server 2008 R2 on UEFI so if this is truly "by-design" due to the formatting of the EFI partition Server 2008 R2 would also have the same error...

If I happen to hear a pertinent response to this I will update. For now I just wanted to get this info out there in case I'm really not the only person who has seen this problem :}