Office Online Server 2016 Troubleshooting: The Office Online service did not respond in a timely fashion

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Problem

You removed the OOS 2016 instance from a Windows Server 2016 host, installed the monthly cumulative update, and then attempted to build the new instance by executing New-OfficeWebAppsFarm, but this fails after a few minutes with the following message:

New-OfficeWebAppsFarm : The Office Online service did not respond in a timely fashion...

You troubleshoot and can't find anything immediately wrong.  Checking the OOS service, you find that it is "Starting..." and OOS services to your customers are down.  You are able to restore service by completely re-installing OOS to the farm, and then rebuilding it.  However, you still can't install the cumulative update.

Solution

Just wait after installing the CU.  Just wait about 5-10 minutes.  It will be back.

References

  • None

Notes

  • Credit for this goes to my team lead, who discovered it accidentally.
  • This only occurred for OOS deployed to Windows Server 2016.  It did not occur for deployments to Windows Server 2012.