[JENKINS-39143] Stage view disappears after restarting jenkins

After restarting jenkins (no jobs were running), my stage view disappeared. When I go to the ajax page, I'm getting:

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Could not load matching start node: java.io.IOException: java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: java.io.FileNotFoundException: D:\build\Jenkins\jobs\MasterCI\builds\54\workflow\3.xml (The system cannot find the path specified)

The 3.xml file is in fact missing and is referenced by other xml files in the folder.

---
Originally reported by cchapman, imported from: Stage view disappears after restarting jenkins

• status: Open
  
• priority: Major
  
• component(s): pipeline, pipeline-stage-step-plugin, pipeline-stage-view-plugin
  
• resolution: Unresolved
  
• votes: 38
  
• watchers: 46
  
• imported: 2025-12-08
  

After restarting jenkins (no jobs were running), my stage view disappeared. When I go to the ajax page, I'm getting:



Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Could not load matching start node: java.io.IOException: java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: java.io.FileNotFoundException: D:\build\Jenkins\jobs\MasterCI\builds\54\workflow\3.xml (The system cannot find the path specified)



The 3.xml file is in fact missing and is referenced by other xml files in the folder.

environment

```
Jenkins 2.7.4

pipeline-build-step 2.3

pipeline-graph-analysis 1.2

pipeline-input-step 2.1

pipeline-milestone-step 1.1

pipeline-model-definition 0.2

pipeline-rest-api 2.1

pipeline-stage-step 2.2

pipeline-stage-view 2.1

OS: windows server 2012 r2
```

Start with the pipeline-stage-view and pipeline-stage-step plugin components and reproduce the restart scenario through the ajax page. Trace why the referenced workflow/3.xml is missing after restart; done means the stage view loads without the missing-node error and the failure has regression coverage.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.