I have deployed a timer job as a feature in SharePoint 2007 and it stopped working all of a sudden. The last time it ran, it was successful and I can see this information from the timer status. Since it stopped working now, I deactivated and uninstalled the timer job. Then, I installed the same solution once again and it wasn't starting the timer job at all. So finally I decided to tweek the code and deployed the solution. Same thing again. At some point, after so many deployments, it started to throw "Failed to create feature receiver object error". I did iisreset, net stop sptimerv3, net start sptimerv3, iisreset and reinstalled it. It was the same error over and over again.
Finally, I created a new solution from the scratch and created a new dll and deployed it. Strangely, this new feature with new dll was also not recognised. Even this deployment throws the same error. Note that, this feature was never installed before at this environment. I am totally confused as to why the new dlls are not getting recognised by the STSADM command. Even after so many attempts its just the same error over and over again.
These are the steps I follow to do an installation.
1. copy and paste dll in GAC.
2. copy the feature.xml with new receiver class information and assembly information in sharepoint features directory.(I am very sure that I've entered the correct class and assembly information. Checked it so many times).
3. iisreset
4. net stop sptimerv3
5. net start sptimerv3
6.iisreset
7. stsadm -o installfeature -name myTimerJobName --> Throws "Failed to create feature receiver object error" (I also tried using -force attribute. it works during installation and activating the feature. But the timer job is not found on the definition after this process).
Basically, I tried everything possible to make it work. Its been over a day that I worked on this issue and still couldn't resolve the problem. It would be of great help if someone throws some light on this issue. Thank you.
-- VT