Yes, that's exactly the route that was chosen (even after explaining the consequences, and the possibilities of how much time/unknown data we could lose in the process).
Turns out that didn't work and I had to use your original advice, restore from our last point-in-time transaction backup. Throughout the night we've recovered all databases so far, and are running thelast CHECKDB - if that clears without errors I will thank my lucky stars and see if we can bring our production environment back up to connect to the databases.
There's no automatic CheckDB on startup.
Whenever I look at the SQL logs after a service restart I see that every database has had a checkdb run against it by a system spid ... looks something like:
Starting up database 'X'.
Recovery is writing a checkpoint in database 'X' (10). This is an informational message only. No user action is required.
CHECKDB for database 'X' finished without errors on 2013-08-18 18:05:19.123 (local time). This is an informational message only; no user action is required
After that the service runs custom scripts (creating trace files, etc), then eventually everything comes up (pending no errors) - how would you best describe this if it's not an automatic CHECKDB?
Thanks for your help Gail, it is sincerely appreciated
______________________________________________________________________________Never argue with an idiot; Theyll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience