# Content Central seems hung up

When capture or workflow looks stalled: how to tell which one it is, restart the right service safely, read the event logs, and know exactly what to send support if it doesn't clear.

Product: content-central · Versions: 7.x · Audience: system-administrator · Time: 15 minutes · Last verified: 2026-08-31

Canonical: https://help.ademero.com/content-central/administration/content-central-seems-hung-up

**In fifteen minutes you'll know which part of the system is actually stalled, you'll have restarted it safely, and — if it doesn't clear — you'll have exactly the evidence support needs to find the cause instead of guessing.**

"Hung up" almost always means one of two things: **capture** (new documents aren't coming in) or **workflow** (documents came in but aren't moving). They're separate background services with separate fixes, so figure out which one you have first.

## First: which kind of stuck?

| What you're seeing | What's stalled | Start at |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Scans, uploads, or emailed documents aren't appearing in the **Coding Queue** | Capture | The capture section below |
| Documents arrived fine but aren't routing — approvals not starting, queues not moving, notification emails not going out | Workflow | The workflow section below |
| Everything works but it's *slow* — pages spin, searches crawl | Neither — that's a performance issue | [Content Central feels slow](/content-central/administration/content-central-feels-slow) |
| One specific document is sitting in an approval queue | Probably configuration, not a stall | [A document is stuck in — or skipped — approval](/content-central/workflow/document-stuck-in-approval) |

## Before you restart anything: take sixty seconds of notes

Restarting is safe — but it also erases the scene. If the stall recurs next week, these notes are what let support find the *cause* instead of shrugging with you.

- [ ] Note the current time, and roughly when things stopped (when did the last document arrive or move?)
- [ ] Note one **specific** example: a file name, a document, or a batch that should have processed and didn't
- [ ] Open **Windows Event Viewer** on the server (**eventvwr** from the Start menu), look in **Windows Logs > Application** around the time things stopped, and screenshot any errors or warnings from Content Central sources
- [ ] Check **Admin > System Health** inside Content Central and screenshot anything not green

## If capture seems stalled

1. Check the simplest cause first: the **oldest** unprocessed item. Capture works oldest-first, so one unprocessable file at the front of the line silently holds everything behind it. A read-only file, a file locked by another program, or a corrupt file is the classic culprit — the [hot-folder guide](/content-central/capture/hot-folder-documents-arent-processing) walks this in detail, and [this one names the program doing the locking](/content-central/administration/find-out-whats-locking-a-file).

2. Open **Windows Services** on the server (**services.msc** from the Start menu) and find the Content Central services. If the capture service shows anything other than **Running**, that's your answer — start it.

3. If it shows Running but nothing is processing, **restart it**: right-click the capture service and choose **Restart**. Documents already in Content Central are untouched, and pending items resume processing when the service comes back up.

4. Give it a few minutes, then check the **Coding Queue** (or your capture destination).
   
   **What you should see:** the backlog starts draining — oldest items first, so a large backlog may take a while to clear completely.

5. Still nothing? Send a fresh test document through (scan, drop a file in the hot folder, or email the capture address) and watch for it specifically. If the *new* item processes but old ones don't, the stall is those specific items — go back to step 1.

## If workflow seems stalled

1. In **Windows Services**, find the workflow service. Same rule: not Running → start it; Running but nothing moving → right-click, **Restart**.

2. Test it with a fresh trigger: capture or update a test document that your workflow rule should match, and watch whether it routes.
   
   **What you should see:** the test document moves within a few minutes. A working test with a stuck backlog usually means the backlog needs a nudge (or the old items never matched the rule at all).

3. If the test document *doesn't* move either, the "stall" is often configuration wearing a stall costume — a schedule that never matches, a date predicate that already passed, or an approval that never started. [A scheduled workflow didn't run — or ran on everything](/content-central/workflow/scheduled-workflow-didnt-run) and [A document is stuck in — or skipped — approval](/content-central/workflow/document-stuck-in-approval) cover both in ten minutes.

> **NOTE:** Restarting one Content Central service is safe, and so is restarting all of them (or the server, in a pinch). The real cost of restart-first isn't risk — it's that a recurring problem keeps recurring because the evidence kept getting erased. Take the sixty seconds of notes first and you get both: a working system today and a findable cause tomorrow.

## If it keeps happening

A stall that clears on restart but comes back is a pattern, and patterns have causes — a nightly job, a specific document type, a mail failure that stops capture, a disk filling up. Don't settle into a restart routine: send support the evidence below with the times of **each** occurrence, and mention anything the stalls have in common.

## Still stuck?

Send support this — it turns "the system is hung up" into a diagnosis:

- [ ] Which service you suspect (capture or workflow), and what you saw that made you think so
- [ ] When it stopped, when you restarted, and whether the restart helped
- [ ] Your one specific example (file name, document, or batch) with its timestamp
- [ ] Screenshots of the **Windows Event Viewer > Application** errors/warnings around the stall — and of anything not green in **Admin > System Health**
- [ ] Whether this is the first time or a repeat — and if it repeats, the dates and times you know about

## What's next

- [Hot-folder documents aren't reaching the Coding Queue](https://help.ademero.com/content-central/capture/hot-folder-documents-arent-processing)
- [Content Central feels slow: report it so it gets fixed fast](https://help.ademero.com/content-central/administration/content-central-feels-slow)
- [A document is stuck in — or skipped — approval](https://help.ademero.com/content-central/workflow/document-stuck-in-approval)