Packet tracing won't be found in Books Online. if you have a network engineer or a server admin who has done network traces before, have them look at the traffic...

You can get the same result by trying to create an ODBC data source on the server referencing the instance. All you're trying to do is validate connectivity. However, if...

Within SQL Server this isn't very doable except by the means you describe (and SQLCMD is a good choice instead of isql/oswl if you're using SQL Server 2005 tools). Linked...

In case it's not the Vista issue, SQL Server 2005 has a recovery mechanism for this type of scenario where you can't get in as an administrative user for SQL...

There's also the level of support for both products. Windows 2000 is in Extended Support, meaning Microsoft is only bringing out patches and hotfixes for security reasons. A few links...

Unless you have a lot of schema, it shouldn't be that many commands. For instance, if all objects are in the dbo schema, you just have to apply the permission...

Aye, tail log backups allow you to attempt to backup the existing transaction log so that you can get to a point in time restore. If you're not familiar with...

Two SQL Servers can use Windows authentication, even if they aren't in the same domain, as long as there is a trust relationship between the two domains. This does assume...

*= means LEFT OUTER JOIN

in general you can replace *= like so:

SELECT *

FROM Orders, Customers

ON Orders.CustomerID *= Customers.CustomerID

becomes:

SELECT *

FROM Orders

LEFT JOIN Customers

ON Orders.CustomerID =...

Once you start a job, it will continue to execute until it either completes or hits an error. Even if you disable it, it will continue to execute the steps.

Therefore,...

In SQL Server 2000 there is a concept called ownership chaining. If the stored procedure and the object it refers to (such as a table or view) are both owned...

For SQL Server 2005, this is the new syntax (though sp_changedbowner still works just fine):

ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON DATABASE::*Database Name* TO *Login*

With that said, one of the cases where this matters...

Run this in all the databases:

SELECT *

FROM sys.objects

WHERE RIGHT(type_desc, 8) = 'FUNCTION'

For clarity, I would put the condition in the WHERE clause. As far as execution, you can run both queries and get the execution plan for both. That should clear...

Can you connect to the instance on the server itself? Have you tried connecting to the instance from a different system other than your own?