Fix COMADMIN_E_PAUSEDPROCESSMAYNOTBERECYCLED 0X80110813

Quick answer

Open Component Services, find your COM+ application, right-click it, and select Start (or Resume if it's paused). Then you can recycle it normally.

Why this happens

This error trips when you try to recycle a COM+ server application that's in a paused state. A paused process means COM+ has temporarily suspended that application — often because of an administrative action, a pooling time-out, or a failure in a dependent component. What's actually happening here is the recycle call hits COM+ infrastructure that checks the process state and refuses to touch a paused one. The error code 0x80110813 maps to COMADMIN_E_PAUSEDPROCESSMAYNOTBERECYCLED in the COM+ admin library.

I've seen this most often after a failed COM+ application shutdown or when someone manually paused the app via script and forgot. It also appears on Windows Server 2016 and 2019 machines running older line-of-business apps that manage COM+ pools.

Fix steps

Open Component Services
Run dcomcnfg from the Start menu or command prompt. This launches the Component Services snap-in.
Navigate to your COM+ application
Expand Component Services → Computers → My Computer → COM+ Applications. Find the paused application — it'll show a grey icon or have '(Paused)' in its name.
Resume the application
Right-click the paused application and choose Start. If it's already started but stuck, choose Shut down first, then Start. The reason step 3 works is that Start removes the pause flag from the COM+ catalog, allowing the process to accept recycle commands again.
Recycle normally
Right-click the application again and select Shut down (or use the recycle option if your admin tool supports it). The app will restart cleanly.

Alternative fixes if the main one fails

Use the COM+ command-line tool
Open an elevated command prompt and run:
```
COMAdmin.COMAdminCatalog catalog = new COMAdmin.COMAdminCatalog();
catalog.Connect("localhost");
catalog.StartApplication("YourAppName");
```
Or use the older comadmin tool if available (it's deprecated but still works on some systems).
Kill the process manually
Open Task Manager, find the DllHost.exe process hosting your COM+ app (check the Description column for your app name), and end it. Then start the app from Component Services. This is hacky but works when the admin UI freezes.
Reboot the machine
If nothing else works, a reboot clears all COM+ process states. Not elegant, but it's a hard reset for the COM+ subsystem.

Prevention tip

Stop pausing COM+ applications manually unless you really need to. If you use scripts to manage COM+ pools, always pair a PauseApplication call with a matching ResumeApplication in a try/finally block. Also set your COM+ application's Pool Size and Recycle Lifetime in the Properties dialog so automatic recycling doesn't collide with manual state changes.