I had the same symptoms on my Windows server running RabbitMQ after disabling the RabbitMQ service, and it refused to start the backup.
The steps I took to solve the problem without rebooting:
- The RabbitMQ log file named
rabbit@ [SERVER_NAME_HERE].log in the C:\Users\[ADMIN_ACCOUNT_USERNAME_HERE]\AppData\Roaming\RabbitMQ\log folder was huge (12+ GB); I renamed it so that RabbitMQ could create a new log file. - I tried again to start the RabbitMQ service in services.msc, which failed (again).
- The new
rabbit@ [SERVER_NAME_HERE].log file indicates that a specific folder cannot be deleted:
cannot_delete, "c:/Users/[ADMIN_ACCOUNT_USERNAME_HERE]/AppData/Roaming/RabbitMQ/db/ rabbit@ [SERVER_NAME_HERE]-plugins-expand/rabbitmq_management-3.3.5/priv/www/cli",
- I tried to rename this
cli folder in Windows Explorer and got the error "This folder is being used by another process." - I downloaded the Sysinternals Handle.exe utility and ran it with the "RabbitMQ" argument, which showed that the folder (
cli ), that the log file that could not be deleted, was blocked using the rundll32.exe process with a specific process identifier. - I killed this instance of
rundll32.exe in the task manager (after turning on the display of process IDs in the View menu). - I started the RabbitMQ service again, and this time it will work!
TL; DR
In particular, the Windows process was to lock the folder that RabbitMQ wanted to delete as part of the startup process. Identification of this process using the Sysinternals Handle utility, and then its destruction allowed RabbitMQ to start successfully.
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