SharePoint Designer Workflows are Not Working

I’m in the process of preparing for my SharePoint conference presentation and came across an odd behavior which is caused by an introduction of a security consideration into SP1. The symptom is that SharePoint designer workflows are not starting automatically (they do start manually though).

This is the KB article that explains the behavior and the trick:

A declarative workflow does not start automatically after you install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 1

You can find the resolution in the CAUSE section. I’ve been running my demo box on a DC (which is not supported anyway), therefore, I couldn’t avoid running the application pool under a domain account (there are no local accounts on a DC box), but I’ve changed the application pool account to a new user and logged on by a non-system user. These two steps did the trick.