I am unable to remove a search service application from SharePoint 2013 standard edition farm. I do not fully know what caused it to get into this state, but where it is at is this:

• Search is “Paused: for external” – this was done while applying a CU
• There is no active topology – I am thinking this occurred when attempts were made to remove the search service and they failed

This causes the situation that I can’t unpause the search because there is not active topology to go to and I can’t activate a topology because it is paused.

At this point, I just want to remove the search service completely and rebuild it, but it times out on delete. I have used the UI, I have used Power shell, etc. I have done IIS resets, config cache rebuilds, IIS resets.

I have also not been able to reproduce the exact same situation on my test environment at all.