SharePoint - Workflow "Failed on Start (retrying)"

Maybe you ran into this issue with your SharePoint environment. You set up a workflow on a list or library and then when it executes you get the status of "Failed on Start (retrying)".

Well, there are a lot of posts out there that are attempting to help you fix the problem. The all suggest the same solution. Just go to a command line and run Lodctr /R "c:\Windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.0\Windows Workflow Foundation\perfcounters.ini"

This is great unless it doesn't work, because there are no other solutions out there. I ran into this problem. It took a while to figure it out, but after snooping around in the WWF 3.0 folder I found a registry setting file that contained some interesting info. I went to the registry to check the settings out to see if I could learn any more. I found that the settings weren't even in the registry.

Now, here is some other information that is pertinant. This server is hosted by another company and they are responsible for installing software as we request. They "supposedly" installing the 3.0 framwork for us and it's a pre-req for SharePoint so I'm pretty sure most of it was there. We've had other issues with them before so it doesn't suprise me.

The next spot I checked out was the event logs and sure enough I found an entry timestamped at the exact time I tried to run the reinstall of the perf counters for WWF. It stated that it couldn't find the key for WWF that was referenced in the ini file. From here I knew that I needed to add the settings from the file I found in the WWF 3.0 folder.

Once I got the registry updated and reran the lodctr command everything started working!

It's not that I'm against hosted systems, I actually love them when managed correctly, but be sure that the one you use has people that actually check this stuff they install and not just assume that everything went perfect.

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