Power BI Service Refresh Suddenly Slow / Timing Out on Pro, Desktop Fast

Hii Usustudent 

This usually happens due to gateway resource constraints in Power BI Service, not a dataset issue. Desktop refresh runs locally with more memory and less parallelism, while Service refresh uses the on-prem gateway, runs tables in parallel, and is more memory-restricted. The errors you’re seeing (spooling, timeouts, disk usage) indicate the gateway is under memory or disk pressure, causing heavy disk spooling and long retries. Common fixes are increasing gateway RAM, ensuring fast disk and sufficient free space for temp/spool folders, reducing parallel load, and scheduling refresh during off-peak SQL hours.

Hi Usustudent ,

Since you already did a fresh gateway install and it did not resolve the issue, you may try fixing the data source name uniqueness. Try replacing the server details in pbix file with ip address. This will fix just in case if there is any confusion with 2 database and server name that looks identical to gateway. You can also try renaming your test db and check.

Please check this post someone has tried to resolve this issue.

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Service/Scheduler-Failed-Running-DM-GWPipeline-Gateway/td-p/1031398

And hopefully the authentication mechanism followed is same in desktop and gateway.

How to change the source name with IP or new name or alias name. 

File → Options and settings → Data source settings->Change Data Source

Once we change the details, we must clear permission, clear cache, refresh and re-authenticate.

Hope this resolves your issue. 

Thanks,

Pallavi

What to check after looking the error:

1) Gateway temp directory

• Check where Microsoft.PowerBI.EnterpriseGateway.exe is writing temp files

• Make sure it’s on:

  • fast local SSD

  • not a network drive

  • not a system disk under pressure

2) Disk I/O during refresh

• Monitor:

  • Disk queue length

  • Read/write latency

• If disk spikes during refresh → that’s your bottleneck

Hi Usustudent,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Fabric Community.

Thank you rohit1991, pallavi_r and cengizhanarslan for the prompt response. 

Based on the issue here all the configuration level mitigations have already been tried. Since the dataset refreshes successfully and quickly in the desktop but times out in the service, looks like this is a power bi service refresh pipeline issue where the operations are failing server side. Desktop refresh does not use this pipeline that is why it continues to complete.

Please raise a support ticket so the backend refresh logs for your tenant and region can be reviewed by the service team. To raise a support ticket, kindly follow the steps outlined in the following guide:

Create a Fabric and Power BI Support Ticket - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Thanks and regards,

Anjan Kumar Chippa