Janet, Keith, Deepak,

Thank-you for all your shared experience and advice. I tried a different tack, and worked. My Primary Database had alkready been configured for Transaction Log Backups. The backups were produced with naming convention dbname_backup_timestamp.trn. When I configured log shipping, a 2nd set of transaction log files was produced with namimg convention dbname_timestamp.trn. These 2nd files were then shipped successfully, but I believe the log sequencing with the files was disrupted by the initial transaction log backups.

So...

- I stopped transaction log backups on the primary database

- De-configured log shipping (is that a word ???? 🙂 )

- took a new FULL backup of the primary database

- restored this to the 2ndary database (with standby option)

- deleted ALL .trn file on primary and 2ndary servers

- Reconfigured log shipping

the restore job now picks up logs and reports that it has restored them.

Regards, Neil

ps. I think I have another problem with availability of the 2ndary database now. It shows up in SQL Management Studio as (restoring...) and the database cannot be opened. I hope this resolves itself as the restore 'catches up'.

- configured log shipping