SharePoint Service Application stucks on starting

Powershell Script

In last days i got some problems on SharePoint 2016 Farms, when we tried to create new service applications using the Central Administration and/or Powershell scripts. The UI was working on it and this took very long without that anything happened. The Service Application stucks on starting/ending.

The Service Application status was stucking on Starting

What we tried then:

  • provisioning and unprovisioning like this post recommends.
  • Stop and Start the service via Powershell like in this post.
  • Reboot
  • IISReset

We also updated the farm with the latest Cumulative Update. After running the PSConfig Wizard the state changed to started. But the next Service Application we created had the same problem.

Until now, we don’t know exactly the reason. But we found a solution which helped us.

Empty the Timer Service Cache

So first we stopped the service SharePoint Administration and the SharePoint Timer service

Service-stucks-on-starting

Then we went to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\<guid>\ and deleted everything except the cache.ini file. We edit the cache.ini file and replace the number in it by a “1”.

Service stucks on starting

After that we start again the SharePoint Adminstration and SharePoint Timer Service. It take some minutes and the cache gets refilled.

Then we used Powershell to provision the service application.

$serviceapplication = Get-SPServiceApplication -Identity <Guid>
$serviceaplication.Provision()

That did the trick.

Service stucks on starting

Unfortunately we had to do this each time we changed a service application. Is it possible that the root cause is Cumulative Update in SharePoint 2016? Does anyone made the same experiences?

The article or information provided here represents completely my own personal view & thought. It is recommended to test the content or scripts of the site in the lab, before making use in the production environment & use it completely at your own risk. The articles, scripts, suggestions or tricks published on the site are provided AS-IS with no warranties or guarantees and confers no rights.

About Karsten Schneider 312 Articles
Consultant for Microsoft 365 Applications with a strong focus in Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business as well as PowerPlatform with PowerApps, Flow and PowerBI. I provide Workshops for Governance & Security in Office 365 and Development of Solutions in the area of Collaboration and Teamwork based on Microsoft 365 and Azure Cloud Solutions. In his free time he tries to collect tipps and worthy experience in this blog.

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