Thanks ... I stand even more enlightened about 64 bit (never having to research it). Definitely a 'rush to market thing'. I am now more inclided to say 'partial product'...

Great question that points out a terrible 'undocumented feature' (bad bug) in 64 bit ...

The explanation is slightly incorrect. It states one will get the following error 5 times:

Server: Msg 8164, Level 16, State 1, Procedure procTestCounter, Line 12

An INSERT EXEC statement cannot be nested.

I...

Have you executed DBCC CHECKDB and DBCC CHECKALLOC against the databases ?

Have you executed UPDATE STATISTICS against the databases ?

Have you tried altering one of the 'quirky' database recovery mode...

Scan your computer for a file named like sqlstp*.* ... I believe sqlstp.exe produces a log file. Please post this and we may be able to help.

and stop/restart SQL Server ... @@servername is set at startup I believe ...

Succint and accurate Phil !!!

Maybe if the upside approached reality, say 90-100K, there might be a few nibbles.

This is a 'dangerous' thread ... first you probably want to use the sysaltfiles table in the master database with your name selection criteria and augment it with "and fileid...

You might want to contact the folks who installed you backup software. It is probably the work of an 'agent' that was installed as a part of the backup process.

It's a stumper ... so back to the basics ... What's your SQL version and SP ? How about MDAC version ? Are you using a domain account for the...

Just be wary of errorlog file growth. You might also want to increase the configured number of errorlogs to keep as well (default is 6, I use 20). Also check...

Fragmentation is also determined by the distribution of key values over the entire possible range for a given index. Take a 6 digit integer as an example (999,999 rows).

If you have 200,000 rows...

How about ...

After your process is complete upload a 'return' file back to Unix.

(maybe containing the original pathname and the processd pathname)

On Unix (whatever 'flavor') have a cron job to...

Also ... did you already restore the master database ? If you have this 'auto-magically' shuts down the database server.