What is it with the User Profile Service?

Question

The "User Profile Synchronization service" gets stuck on starting on every machine and server I ever use.

Is there any guide, that is not Harbar's and 200 pages long, on what can make this service a success ? And by success I mean start.

When it first gets stuck on starting, it will stay there. This has to be the worst service made in the history of mankind.

Answer 1

Try Patching your SharePoint servers. I am working on a project for a customer now and after we patched all of our SharePoint Servers to SP1 and November 2015 CU the service now starts without any issues.

You can find your servers patch level by going to: yourcentraladminaddress/_admin/PatchStatus.aspx

Macth your SharePoint Servers build numbers on this article: http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=346 to check if you have SP1 installed and what CU your servers are on.

Answer 2

that is really tough question to answer.

You have to check the ULS logs and Event Viewer during the time when it stuck.

I would do following things( i hate AutospInstaller)

• Delete the User Profile service
• check the Certs store on server, make sure no SharePoint/FIm certs over their, if any delete them.check this
• check the central admin > monitoring and delete ProfileSynchronizationSetupJob job if running. it is one time job.
• reboot the server
• add the farm account into Local admin( as this will run the UPS sync).
• recreate the User Profile Manually
• Start the Sync service.

Answer 3

Your were looking at your answer. If you follow Harbars guide - it will work. He even has a "Stuck on Starting" page to help you troubleshoot. TechNet also has the step by step for deploying it - if you follow that, it will work (Mr. Harbar had input on that article as well).

if your permissions are not right, it won't work. You may also want to consider using something like AutoSPInstaller - to deploy your DEV box which helps with the setup (you still have some permissions to set outside that tool).

If all you need is a working environment I would consider rolling out a machine in Azure or using a service like CloudShare.