PS Config fails with “The exclusive inplace upgrader timer job failed”

I was working with a client recently and after running some OS updates on their SharePoint servers, I tried to run the Product Config wizard (PSconfig).

 

The command I was running was as follows.

PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures

 

Unfortunately, at one point (later in the sequence – it began successfully and ran for a min or two) the process failed with the following error message.

The exclusive inplace upgrader timer job failed

 

I was able to find a proposed sequence of how to resolve the issue in this technet forum below.  However, this did not work for me.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/94a8bb64-e0ea-493f-8e29-01347b1fc6c7/psconfig-fails-failed-to-upgrade-sharepoint-products

 

 (From the forum – this didn’t work for me) 

I had the same issue and called Microsoft support.  Here is the fix:

• Stop the “SharePoint 2010 Timer” service
• Delete ONLY the xml files from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\216f8013-b78b-4e5b-8631-3a5f4c7277e8
• Note: Do NOT delete the cache.ini file in this folder
• Edit cache.ini and change to “1”
• Start “SharePoint 2010 Timer” service
• Run psconfig again:

  PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait -force

 

What finally resolved the issue for me, or at least allowed me to get the psconfig to run successfully to completion (NOTE: I believe there are still some ghosts in the system that need to be busted) was this sequence of meticulously timed steps:

 But what really worked was this… 

• I once again ran the command

PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures

in the “Bin” Folder running as an administrator console (PowerShell) session.

• Next, I opened up a second Administrator PowerShell session
• The moment I saw the status “Configuration task 5 of 6 is executed” (in the first console) I start to run the following command in the second console session:

net start SPTraceV4 ; net start SPWriterV4 ; net start SPAdminV4 ; net start SPTimerV4

After that the configuration task finished successfully.

[NOTE: You either must run each of those on a separate line in PowerShell or use the semi-colon separated version]

 

Hopefully if you run into this yourself, this will allow you to rectify the issue in a timely fashion.  Note, this may behavior may be indicative of something more problematic wrong with your farm and/or timer service, but at least you’ll have central admin back after this, and can further debug from there.