Admin Jobs failing on the SharePoint Servers

Administration jobs means the timer jobs that are executed on regular basis on the SharePoint Server. They range from Alert processing, Synchronization, etc. To get the complete timer job list for the farm, browse to Central Administration -> Operations -> Timer jobs

If you see any failed job in the timer jobs status, the first thing that you might try is running the following command on all the servers :

stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs

The above command will try and execute the timer jobs that are stuck/scheduled for the specific time when you run that command. There are possibilities like the stsadm command is stuck and shows “Executing….” in the command prompt after you attempt to run the above command.

To run the above command successfully, follow the below troubleshooting steps :

Open Central Administration -> Operations -> Diagnostic Logging
Select “All” under the jobs and set the Error logging to Verbose.
Try to execute the execadmsvcjobs command.

Open the log file under “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Logs” . This is the default log directory. It might be possible that the logs directory is changed by the administrator who has set up SharePoint. We can check the logs settings from Central Administration -> Operations -> Diagnostic logging.

Open the file in MS Excel -> Apply filters for the columns -> Under the Levels column, select “high” and “verbose”. Under the category column, select “Timer” and “Unified Logging Service”

Check for any errors that you get there.
Based upon errors, we need to further troubleshoot the issue.

The possible errors that you might get are :

1. The previous instance of the timer job ‘Application Server Administration Service Timer Job’, id ‘{12403D5C-D18B-4D06-9E2F-C2855E30385C}’ for service ‘{83A518CA-9139-4A50-999B-6C35E4D42A34}’ is still running, so the current instance will be skipped. Consider increasing the interval between jobs.

2. Error during Encrypting Decrypting.

If you get the above two errors, they probably are related. This issue normally occurs where you have multiple server farm configuration. The first error says that there is an admin jobs that is not getting executed. As the job is stuck, we need to remove that job from the config so that other jobs can be executed. Run the following two commands to check if it is a ssp timer jobs or a admin timer job that is listed :

stsadm -o deletessptimerjob -id “12403D5C-D18B-4D06-9E2F-C2855E30385C”

If the above command says that there is no ssp timer jobs listed with the above ID, run the following command to delete the object with that id :

stsadm -o deleteconfigurationobject -id “12403D5C-D18B-4D06-9E2F-C2855E30385C”

This will remove the timer job that was stuck. Now try and execute stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs on the other servers and you might get the second error that I have listed above. The Encryption/Decryption error states that for some reason, the password used by the timer service on that server is not valid.

Open Services.msc on the server where you are getting the error and re-enter the log on credentials for the “Windows SharePoint Services Timer”. Run the following command to update the username and password for the timer service account :

stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials -userlogin “domain\username” -password “xxxxxxx” -local

NOTE: For the complete list for updating the farm credentials follow this kb :http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934838/en-us

Run the stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs on the server where you were getting the errors and this time it will run succesfully. If you face any further problems, or other error messages, please leave a comment and I should get back to you soon.