User profile synchronization service wont start after SharePoint Service pack SP2

Question

Hi
-Using SharePoint 2010 with 1 appserver and 2 frontend webservers on Service Pack2. (ms server 2008r2, SQLServer2008r2).
-Farmaccount has been set to local admin on all sp servers.
-Firstly, the User Profile Service Application runs fine and is started. Dont mix it with the User profile synchronization Service.
Prior to installing SP2 User profile service application and user profile synchronization service were running fine.
The first thing I did after the installation of SP2 was running the:
-psconfig -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -wait
As SharePoint setup user (spadmin).
This ran fine on the 2 front end web servers.
However i got one fault on the Appserver:
I have also tried:
PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures
which led to same resulting error.
So I tried to start the Use profile synchronization service as suggested manually by logging on with the Farmaccount, starting the user profile synchronization service through Central Administration. This led to Stuck on Starting status. 
The windows services Forefront had status starting, then stopped.
One question:
Prior to starting the User profile synchronization service through Central Administration. What account and startup status should the 2 Forefront Windows Services have? (Automatic and local system?) or (Automatic and Farmaccount?) or (Disabled and Local
system?) or (Disabled and farmaccount?). Because i know that SharePoint UPA will provision these services though Central Administration. However what is the default state prior to starting the Synchronization service?
So i continue...
Since it was stuck on starting i stopped it with:
stop-SPServiceInstance -identity <upaSyncguid>
which gave me:
Stop-SPServiceInstance : An object of the type Microsoft.SharePoint.Administrat
ion.SPServiceInstanceJobDefinition named "job-service-instance-36bdf2ef-58f2-45
e5-8f78-ab75f646611a" already exists under the parent Microsoft.SharePoint.Admi
nistration.SPTimerService named "SPTimerV4". Rename your object or delete the
and i could fix with:
#Stop the stopping:
stsadm -o provisionservice -action stop -servicetype "Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ProfileSynchronizationService, Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles,
Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" -servicename FIMSynchronizationService
I also removed the forefront certificate from personal - certificate store, as this is provisioned when user profile synchronization service is provisioned.
That set the Central Administration Status on the User profile synchronization Service to disabled. Fine.
Everytime i tried to start the user profile synchronization service (logged on as farmaccount), left it for 10-15 min and did iisreset and restart sharepoint timer service, and also tried rebooting the appserver. No change.
A thought, is it important to restart timer service and do iisreset on the two frontend servers after trying to start the user profile synchronization service on the appserver?
I'm getting to the point were i just want to delete the whole service application and set it up anew...
any tips will be greatly appreaciated.
brgs
Bjorn

Answer 1

You're very welcome, hope it helped, if not the I suggest you clear the configuration cache as follows.
The config cache is where config settings are stored locally on the Microsoft SharePoint server, so a SQL call isn’t required.
To clear the cache:
Stop the SP Timer service. To do this, follow these steps:
Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click
Services.
Right-click SharePoint 2010 Timer, and then click Stop.
Close the Services console.
On the computer that is running Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and on which the Central Administration site is hosted, click
Start, click Run, type explorer, and then press ENTER.
In Windows Explorer, locate and then double-click the following folder:
%SystemDrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID
Notes
The %SystemDrive% system variable specifies the letter of the drive on which Windows is installed. By default, Windows is installed on drive C.
The GUID placeholder specifies the GUID folder. There may be more than one of these.
The ProgramData folder may be hidden. To view the hidden folder, follow these steps:
On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
Click the View tab.
In the Advanced settings list, click Show hidden files and folders under
Hidden files and folders, and then click OK.
You can also simply type this directly in the path if you do not want to show hidden files and folders.
Back up the Cache.ini file. (Make a copy of it. DO NOT DELETE THIS FILE, Only the XML files in the next step)
Delete all the XML configuration files in the GUID folder (DO NOTE DELETE THE FOLDER). Do this so that you can verify that the GUID folders content is replaced by new XML configuration files when the cache is rebuilt.
Note When you empty the configuration cache in the GUID folder, make sure that you
do NOT delete the GUID folder and the Cache.ini file that is located in the GUID folder.
Double-click the Cache.ini file.
On the Edit menu, click Select All.
On the Edit menu, click Delete.
Type 1, and then click Save on the
File menu. (Basically when you are done, the only text in the config.ini file should be the number 1)
On the File menu, click Exit.
Start the Timer service. To do this, follow these steps:
Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click
Services.
Right-click SharePoint 2010 Timer, and then click Start.
Close the Services console.
Note The file system cache is re-created after you perform this procedure. Make sure that you perform this procedure on all servers in the server farm.
Make sure that the Cache.ini file in the GUID folder now contains its previous value. For example, make sure that the value of the Cache.ini file is not 1.
Check in the GUID folder to make sure that the xml files are repopulating. This may take a bit of time.
BRGS
Mishagri