What is the tsql you used to make the change? Are you dumping the table into a temp table and then renaming that temp table and replacing the actual table or are you doing something like the following?

Given a table such as this

CREATE TABLE dbo.Employee

(

EmployeeID INT IDENTITY (1,1) NOT NULL

,FirstName VARCHAR(50) NULL

,MiddleName VARCHAR(50) NULL

,LastName VARCHAR(50) NULL

,DateHired datetime NOT NULL

)

Use this to increase the size of the FirstName filed to 100 characters.

ALTER TABLE dbo.Employee

ALTER COLUMN FirstName VARCHAR(100)