When creating a new Shared Services Provider in a MOSS 2007 farm, the SSP creation results in an error:
"Failure! Shared Services Provider creation failedReason: Timed out waiting for Shared Services Provider 'SSPName' provisioning timer job to startCheck the event log for details. Note: SSP provisioning will be retried periodically. If you correct the error that caused this failure, provisioning will subsequently succeed. To stop provisioning from being retried, delete the SSP."
The SSP remains in "Provisioning" status.
SOLUTION:
Exam the event viewer for errors.
Refer to Microsoft KB article number 934838,
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934838. If the failure error is being caused by a service account login failure, then use stsadm.exe to update the password of the service account.
Once the underlying issue is resolved, SSP will complete the provisioning process automatically.