December, 2007

This is another problem I've been working on recently, whose resolution I felt could be interesting to share here. Let's first reproduce the errors, before trying to explain anything. So, please, connect to your instance of SQL Server 2005 and run this...

One colleague reported to me that one of his customers was getting the following error message when trying to install SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2: Func Name='RestoreSetupParams'> Failed to find installation media path due to datastore exception...

That was the question one develepment consultant asked me. My initial answer, was what I typically answer when I'm asked any of these questions: "I dunno, but let me check it for you." :-) After reviewing the source code of SSIS runtime in SQL Server...

Have you ever experienced this error in SQL Server 2005 and under the same circumstances, but using SQL Server 2000 instead, you never "suffered" this problem? This issue was recently raised to my attention. And its resolution I found it of general...

A colleague reported to me what she considered a weird behavior, she was experiencing while trying to monitor her SQL Server 2005 instances' performance counters. Her main concern was this: Why do my SQL Server 2005 counters do not report actual values...

  Somebody was trying to run the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard (DTSWizard.exe) in one of his machines, but when he clicked Next on the first (welcome) dialog, it showed the following error:     ===================================...

I have been working on a case where a customer reported that, once he plugged in his custom assembly which implemented a set of SqlFunctions and he invoked those functions from T-SQL, SQL Server started eagerly eating all memory and performance dropped...

Then go and participate in the Connect Beta program. Be among the pioneers to discover and enjoy this new release, featuring many improvements and new experiences which have been build out based on your inestimable feedback.   Thanks in advance for...

First part of this post is available at SQL Server Agent failing to start because "The EventLog service has not been started" . I've just confirmed an improvement has been already checked-in into SQL Server 2008's code which keeps up calling...

Even though the documentation doesn't explicitly explain the existence of this limitation, a failover clustered instance of SQL Server (whether it is 2000 or 2005) doesn't support loading data or log files of any database from disks other than those which...

If you have an OLE DB Source within a Data Flow in your SSIS package, and you click on the Preview button to get a sample (max of 200 rows) of the data returned by the statement you have configured, and the server takes more than 30 seconds to return...

Somebody told me today that he was using SQL Server Management Studio Database Properties (Files Page) to try to set the Initial Size property of a database file to a value lower than the one currently set for that file on the server. And even though...

( This post has been extended with SQL Server Agent failing to start because "The EventLog service has not been started" (Second Part) ) One customer reported to us that their SQL Server 2000's SQL Server Agent services, recently started to...

The following topic in SQL Server 2000's documentation “Backing Up the model, msdb, and distribution Databases” ( http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa173541(SQL.80).aspx) , and the equivalent in SQL Server 2008 “Backing Up the model and msdb Databases...

After a long time, I had the opportunity to meet again my colleague and friend Eladio , who is a well recognized Mentor working at Solid Quality Mentors . He was delivering some training sessions to Microsoft customers in our premises today. In one of...

One customer reported that he was running SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition build 8.00.2187. His System's default language setting was Russian (but it happens that it could be reproduced with any locale different than US English.) He was running one...

Have you ever wished you could get closer to Microsoft products' development teams? Would you like to submit any issue you have found while using our products, whether it is a bug, a product limitation, a given feature you would like us to add, or a certain...

In the following example, I tried to apply Service Pack 2 on top of an existing instance of SQL Server 2005 which had one mounted point under the instance's Data folder. In such case, setup failed and SQL9_Hotfix_KB921896_sqlrun_sql.msp.log revealed the...

Is your SQL Server 2005 installation blowing out while trying to install a clustered instance? And are you seeing the following output in setup's log file? ********************************************** Running: InstallSqlAction at: 2006/1/16 19:50:38...

You may be trying to apply one hotfix, one Cumulative Update or one Service Pack on top of your SQL Server 2005 instance and it fails, showing the following information in the setup log, and ERRORLOG, respectively:   From setup log: <Func Name...

When running Conflict Viewer (C:\program files\microsoft sql server\90\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\ConflictViewer.exe) on a French SQL Server 2005 installed on a French OS (Windows Server 2003 SP1 in my tests), the user interface for the Conflict Viewer...

Have you had the opportunity to ever use our support services? How would you score the service you received? What part of the whole experience would you like us to improve? Any comments in this area are more than welcome. Thanks for your feedback on this...

Another troubleshooting story to share...   Customer was using SQL Server 2000 (build 8.00.2162). They use SQL Agent mail for sending notifications about job completion. They upgraded their Exchange Server 5.5 to Exchange Server 2003, and since then...

Another recently answered question from a colleague. My colleague posted the following question (modified a bit to leave relevant information only): From: <Removed_Intentionally> Sent: <Removed_Intentionally> To: <Removed_Intentionally>...

The cause for this nasty to diagnose behavior was that in customer's machine, when you ran "cmd.exe /c cd" with "c:\program files\debugging tools for windows" as the current directory, it was returning "c:\" as the actually...