Problem 1: The search service is currently offline

My search wasn’t functioning. Clicking on the Search Settings link in the Search section of my Shared Services Provider, I got following error: The search service is currently offline. Visit the Services on Server page in SharePoint Central Administration to verify whether the service is enabled. This might also be because an indexer move is in progress.

I restarted a couple of hundred times the search services, both in the SharePoint Central Administration, Operations sections as in the Services tool to start and stop Windows services under Administrative Tools on the Application Server . I relinked the indexer too couple of times, all without result.

Solution: Create a new Shared Services Provider

It all ended up by creating a new Shared Services Provider and change association of my restored Web Application to the newly created Shared Services Provider.

Off course, I deleted my restored Shared Services Provider too and had to reconfigure some settings in my newly created Shared Services Provider.

After this having done, my search service was functioning again in my new topology.

Problem 2: Alerts were not arriving

Alerts were not arriving anymore after the farm restore. After a while, I noticed the Immediate Alerts Timer Job Definition was missing (Central Administration > Operations > Timer Job Defintions).

Apparently, this Timer Job Definition was not restored upon a full farm restore…

Solution: Add the Immediate Alerts Timer Job Definition

Adding the Immediate Alerts Timer Job Definition could be done by running following instruction at the command prompt:

stsadm –o setproperty –pn job-immediate-alerts 
–pv “every 5 minutes between 0 and 59” –url <url>

And hey, alerts were arriving, and the Immediate Alerts Job appeared again in the Timer Job Definition list.

Problem 3: Other Timer Job Definitions missing

While I was looking for the missing Immediate Alerts Job missing, I remarked there were some other Jobs missing too after my farm restore. Following was the list of missing Timer Job Definitions:

• Change Log


• Database Statistics


• Dead Site Delete


• Disk Quota Warning


• Recycle Bin


• Usage Analysis

Solution: Running some other stsadm commands

I tried to use the same trick as for the Immediate Alerts Job, which worked for the Dead Site Delete and Usage Analysis Timer Job Definitions: they re-appeared. Unfortunately, I didn’t find how to let the others re-appear.

To fix the 2 Timer Job Definitions which I managed to let re-appear, run following commands at the command prompt:

stsadm –o setproperty –pn job-dead-site-delete
-pv “Daily at 00:00:00” –url <url>

stsadm –o setproperty –pn job-usage-analysis –pv
”Daily between 00:00:00 and 23:45:00” –url <url>