I’m sure many of you would have seen this issue when running SQL 2008/2008 R2/2012 setup on a new server. The setup will proceed to install Setup support files, the window will disappear but, strangely enough, the next window never shows up. ...

When installing SQL Server 2008/2008 R2, you might come across a situation where the setup fails towards the end, when trying to start the SQL Server services. You find this message in the summary.txt:- Configuration error code: 0x4BDAF9BA@1306...

I recently worked on a very interesting issue, where one of the cluster nodes in an AlwaysOn environment became unstable, and the administrators ended up evicting the node from the Windows cluster as an emergency measure. Ideally, since the primary node...

One of the cool things about my job is that I get to work on the latest technologies earlier than most people. I recently stumbled upon an issue related to Filetables, a new feature in SQL Server 2012. To start with, a Filetable brings you the ability...

Now here’s one that had me stumped for quite some time. A brief description of the issue:- 1. I have 2 instances of SQL Server set up on different servers, both with a Case sensitive collation 2. At least one of the instances is installed...

I recently worked on a very interesting “issue” in DB mirroring, relevant to a very specific scenario. Read on to find out more. Basically, we have a setup which looks something like this: Initial setup with machines A, B and C A principal...

I know that memory management in SQL Server is one area that’s a bit of an enigma for a lot of people, and most of us only tend to know as much about memory as is related to our day-to-day activities. In this post(and others in this series), I shall...

You might run into this situation where SQL Server fails to come online (either with a new install or an existing one). Looking at the application event logs, you see these messages: Event Type: Error Event Source: MSSQLSERVER Event Category...

Ghost records are something that are a bit of an enigma for most folks working with SQL Server, and not just because of the name. Today, I’ll seek to explain the concept, as well as identify some troubleshooting techniques. The main reason behind...

I ran into a very interesting issue with temp tables recently. The issue description goes something like this. We have an application preparing some SQL statements, and sending them to the SQL Database engine for execution. However, the “issue”...

This one is for all my friends out there who use Sharepoint. A default Sharepoint installation enables/installs the Windows Internal database, and creates its databases on it. The Windows Internal Database is, in a way, a special edition of SQL Server...

This is an issue that I had been busy working on these past few days. We were getting AV dumps on the DB, and when I looked at the stack, I found that SQL was calling a function to get the name of a column(given a table name), an index id and key id....

This is one of those “rare” setup issues you might run into, on a “Bad luck” day. The patch fails, and in the summary.txt, you see this at the bottom:- Summary No passive nodes were successfully patched Exit Code Returned: 11009...

Found an interesting Non-Yielding scheduler recently. Opened the dump, and found function calls related to backup verification (such as validating the file name, verifying that the drive is part of the cluster group, etc.) at the top of the stack: ...

Okay, so I woke up one morning and decided that this was a good day to patch my SQL Server 2008 R2 instance (named LPT2) to Service Pack 1. So I just downloaded the Service Pack from the Microsoft website, ran it, and was going through the screens, whistling...

It’s very rare that I run into an issue with the Resource database, and the one I ran into recently was rarer still. But before I get into the nitty-gritty of the issue, let us begin by outlining a few details about the resource database: The...

This is for all my developer friends out there. I recently had a very interesting discussion with a friend of mine on the enigma called NULL and how it’s different from, say, an empty string. This is something that’s been under debate for...

Okay, let me admit first up that this is not an out and out SQL Server issue, but one of those interesting ones, that required me to provide an easy workaround. What happened was, someone (or some program) deleted the entire SQL Server folder from the...

I recently ran into yet another issue, where the error message had absolutely no relation to the final solution. When trying to back up a database, we were getting the following error: Msg 18273, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Could not clear 'DIFFERENTIAL...

Before you read this, I would strongly recommend reading Part 1 first. The memory architecture evolved in a big way from SQL 2000 to 2005. Basically, in 2000, all we had was the procedure cache (used to cache compiled plans and execution plans, execution...

In part 1 and part 2 of the series, we talked about the memory architecture and the Procedure Cache respectively. In this third and final instalment of the SQL Server Memory series, I will look to focus on troubleshooting SQL Server Memory pressure issues...

Let’s say you have an environment which implements DNS forwarding. In such a setup, the client uses a different name (or FQDN) while connecting to SQL Server than the actual SQL Server name (or FQDN). The connection request is forwarded to actual...

Ran into this interesting issue recently. I was trying to install a patch on SQL, and it failed. I searched in the hotfix.log (since this was a SQL 2005 instance), and found these messages:- 02/03/2012 03:01:03.649 Installing file: sqlrun_sql.msp 02...

This one is for all my DBA friends out there. I recently ran into this issue when running a security patch installation for a SQL 2005 instance on SP4. The setup failed, and when I looked into the “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup...

This is an interesting issue that I ran into, and took some time to find out the steps for resolution. What was happening was the customer was receiving repeated prompts for installing KB 2463332 for Windows Internal Database. It could, of course, have...