SharePoint Timer Job Stuck/Paused Fix

Ran into a problem recently where the Workflow Timer Job on our SharePoint 2010 box was stuck at 0% and Paused.  

Restarting the Timer Job and trying to kick off again did not provide the fix I was hoping.  So after some googling, I finally came across a solution.  This appears to happen if your cache is full so the solution is to clear your system cache on every server that the Workflow is trying to run on.  In my case that was my one web front end and my one crawl server.  
Perform the following steps on each server your workflow is running on:
  1. Go to Start -> Administrative Tools -> Services
  2. Find the SharePoint Timer Job Service -> Right Click -> Press Stop to stop the service
  3. On the computer Central Admin is on, open Windows Explorer and navigate to the following location: Drive (the drive SharePoint is installed on, in my case that is the C drive)UsersApplication DataMicrosoftSharePointConfigGUID (there will be folders named with a GUID, go into each one and perform these steps)  
    • For Windows Server 2008 the folder location is:  Drive:ProgramDataMicrosoftSharePointConfigGUID
    • Note:  The Application Data folder may be hidden.  To show, click Show Hidden Files and Folders through Windows Explorer’s Folder Options Setting
  4. Delete everything in the GUID Folder EXCEPT the Cache.ini file
    • When you empty this folder (the configuration cache) make sure you do not delete the GUID Folder itself and the cache.ini file that is located in the GUID folder.  
  5. Open the Cache.ini file in a text editing program
  6. Delete everything in the file and type 1
  7. Save and close the file
  8. Go to Start -> Administrative Tools -> Services -> Find the SharePoint Timer Job -> Right Click -> Start
    • Note:  The file system cache is re-created after you perform the previous steps.  Make sure that you perform these steps on all servers in the farm that are running your timer job
  9. Go to Central Admin -> Monitoring -> Find your stalled Timer Job -> Check Job Status -> Find your Timer Job -> Click Run Now and verify that it executes successfully

13 thoughts on “SharePoint Timer Job Stuck/Paused Fix”

  1. Do you know if this would work for Sharepoint 2007 as well? Every day or two our incremental search will get paused and halts all future searches until we resume and finish that crawl. Not sure why this is happening and haven't found much online that speaks to this issue. Your post is about the closest. Thanks, Nelson

  2. Hi ,
    I deleted the job-delete-timer-job-history accidentally and even the job definition wont show up now.
    what is the easiest method to re create/undelete the job without any downtime.

    Nicholas

  3. Hello,
    I too have the same problem with Nintex workflow scheduler timer job. But clearing cache is not helping me to resolve the issue. Any other thoughts?
    Thanks,
    Soni

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