I usually never restore master onto another machine.  Restoring Master is something I would only ever do when something happened to a master database and then I might try to...

I can't think of any reason to separate them.  The SQL Server binaries are installed on the C: drive of all our servers along with the OS files.  The databases,...

Use profiler to capture recompile events and look in the EVENTSUBCLASS column for the reason.  For more information on interpreting these codes see the microsoft article:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql2k/html/sql_queryrecompilation.asp

A video of someone...

Use a ;  not a ,  as a command separator

If you do a search on DBCC SHOWCONTIG on this site you will find several scripts that do a SHOWCONTIG.  Pick the one that best suits your needs.  To execute...

You can always order new media disks from Microsoft.  Reporting Services is shipped with SQL Server.

The SQLteam links really hold a wealth of info on this subject.   The approach discussed by travisl (on the sqlteam site) with reference to the codeproject link seems great.  I...

Thanks for your comments.  I'll look into this.

Not directly.  You can guess at the password and then use the password encrypt function - PWDENCRYPT(). This stores the password as a one-way hash. Use PWDCOMPARE() to compare encrypted guess...

First production database restores are a DBA job - always; never the operator or anyone else. 

If there is a need for someone to do a backup just write up...

To clarify.  I agree that you shouldn't change the recovery model to simple in order to avoid backups.  What I said was if you are not going to backup the...

If you don't backup you transaction log on a periodic basis you probably should set your database to a recovery model of 'simple' rather than 'full' so that the transaction...

Just my 2 cents but log shipping is not really "real time"  I know you said "as close to real time", but keep in mind even if you take transaction log...

Most 3rd party backup tools include methods for easier log shipping.  For example from the Red-Gate website:

SQL Backup makes log shipping much simpler than native SQL Server log shipping and...

Just a thought:  try installing client tools on the server with MSDE and see if you can get on that way.  If you can then it may be a network/firewall...