@ken Lee

Put your question to ASK.sqlServerCentral.com, or one of the forums, and see if one of the experts can help with this problem. I agree that, when faced with a frustration like this, one's instinct is to strip off as much complexity as possible to get to the root of the problem, but I've never known constraints to be the guilty party of a deadlock problem, but I'd rather one of the specialists dived in to help you. See Brad's 'How to track down Deadlocks using SQL Server POrofiler'[/url] Also check out Jonathan Kehayias and Ted Krueger's book Troubleshooting SQL Server: A Guide for the Accidental DBA[/url]