Sharepoint workflows does not start

Question

After some point wokflows on Sharepoint MOSS 2007 System stopped functioning. They do not start, their status allways remains in 'Starting' state. The issue remains for a declarative workflow. And even if we try to run workflow manually. Issue resolved temporary by restarting owstimer service, but after about 5 minutes it again stops functionaing again. Did anybody run into the similar issue?

Answer 1

We resolved the problem. It was one workflow which has stuck in infinite loop due to bad design, and accidental invalid input. It was generating huge number of rows in EventCache and ScheduledWorkItems tables in WSS_Content database. So WSSTimer with SQLServer was eating all the resources trying to read tremendous amounth of data. Problem was very hard to localize on Sharepoint itself, it has no means of diagnosing invididual workflow instanses. We figured issue only after profiling on database itself.

Answer 2

Great post. I think that I am now able to look in the right area.

If my issue is a bad workflow, how can I reset all of this to get things working again? I have rebooted the server and deleted the workflows that I suspect. The WSSTimer service seems to be running ok. Can I delete items out of the above tables? How did you resolve it?

Thanks!