Recently on a client site where we’re using an old version of ColdFusion I tried logging in to the admin area and rather than the login prompt, it was showing me the error message “Cron service not available”

After running around various pages that were all a duplicate of this Adobe forums thread saying the problem was with the <ColdFusion directory>\lib\neo-cron.xml file being corrupt, I tracked down the file on the server and checked it. The file was empty, well, it was full of spaces or tabs and not much else. I tried renaming it and re-starting the ColdFusion service and was still getting the error. Then I tried making an empty file called neo-cron.xml and restarting the service, no difference. I didn’t have a ready backup of the file so thought I was stuck, but tried a copy of the one from my more recent test server version of ColdFusion. Another service restart and it worked.

In case you’re stuck like me, here is the contents of the default neo-cron.xml from CF v11, it worked for my client’s server which is an earlier CF version:

<wddxPacket version='1.0'><header/><data><array length='4'><struct type='coldfusion.server.ConfigMap'></struct><boolean value='false'/><string></string><string>log,txt</string></array></data></wddxPacket>

You will need to re-make your scheduled tasks using the CF Admin, or CFSchedule in code.

Note: Depending on the age of your ColdFusion install, the neo-cron.xml directory could be in <your ColdFusion directory>\lib\ or <your ColdFusion directory>\cfusion\lib\

Good luck with your problem, I hope this helps.