Vshadow.exe is a nifty little command-line tool for creating/deleting/querying/managing shadow copies on Windows. Unfortunately, it doesn't ship with any version of Windows, there are different versions of it for every version of Windows, and it typically comes packaged in some big SDK package.

(The exception here is Windows Vista/2008 and 7/2008 R2, which ships with diskshadow.exe, a tool with the same functionality, but a different interface - it has its own shell, similar to how diskpart.exe works. This arguably makes it more difficult to script; mostly because it involves dealing with another scripting environment.)

Here's a StackOverflow answer with a bit more background to all this.

To make things easier, I've collected the various vshadow.exe versions into a single zip file, which you can download here.

Inside that zip file are the following files -

• vshadow-2003-x86.exe
• vshadow-2003-x86-alt.exe
• vshadow-xp-x86.exe
• vshadow-2008-r2-x64.exe
• vshadow-2008-r2-x86.exe
• vshadow-2008-x64.exe
• vshadow-2008-x86.exe

They are named according to the operating system version they work on.

As far as I know, there isn't a version specifically for 2003 x64, and there aren't any versions specific to 2003 R2 either. So I believe vshadow-2003-x86.exe will work on R2 systems, as well as x64. You'll just get an error if they don't - no harm will be done (don't quote me on this though; this was the case with running the x64 one on x86 machines, and the 2008 one on 2008 R2, so there is precedence).

There are two versions for Windows Server 2003, because both claim to be for that OS version, but they're different sizes. I don't have a 2003 box around to work out the difference. There is also a separate one for Windows XP.

The files above also run on the corresponding desktop operating system unless there is a specific version for the desktop operating system, i.e. the 2008 files run on Windows Vista; and the 2008 R2 files run on Windows 7.