Clear SharePoint Workflow cache

Sometimes SharePoint Workflows will hang or will not stared. To fix this you need to clear the cache of the Workflow directory on the SharePoint Servers.


Clear SharePoint cache.

Go to “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID” (in Windows Server 2003) or to c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\GUID (in Windows Server 2008).

The procedure is simple (do it for every server):

1. Stop the Administration and Timer service
2. Delete all XML files in the directory (not the folder itself)
3. Open “Cache.ini” and write the number 1 instead of the existing number (you might want to make a note of it)
4. Start the services again
5. Wait for a minute or two and see if the folder starts to fill up with xml files. It is likely that it will contain less than before clearing it.
6. Check the cache.ini file. If it’s accessible and the number is considerable greater than 1 your cache has been properly initialized and chances are that your problems are now fixed. It didn’t fix my problem, so you may need to read on… (if you didn’t have the “888k” log entry mentioned above you probably have it now)

After this sometimes there is need to start new workflow on some item.