The Nova Scotia government is trying to figure out what caused a province-wide crash of the Registry of Motor Vehicles computer system Tuesday morning.

The crash occurred after the system underwent routine maintenance, CBC News has learned.

A spokeswoman with Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations said technicians worked from 9 p.m. on Friday and through the weekend to ensure the computer system was operational.

"Staff worked through the long weekend to test the system and to ensure that the RMV (Registry of Motor Vehicles) application was functional. All indications were that the system was operational. These tests are not "real world" but do normally provide satisfactory indication of any issues," wrote Susan Tate, a spokeswoman for Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations.

"However, once the system went live on Tuesday morning, it became apparent that there were printing issues."

Tate said staff initiated contingency plans, providing interim documents to customers.

"This was a province-wide outage of the RMV application. Staff worked hard to stabilize the RMV system; our system outages are infrequent," Tate wrote in an email.

"We are working to determine the root cause."

The problem was fixed by 9:46 a.m. on Tuesday, said Tate.