You just gotta love those "improvements" to the product !!!

It's an outline of steps to take in order to address poorly performing queries and databases.

Interesting ... however when you break it down to the most basic element - its just a tool. With any tool, some tools work better than others for specific purpose(s)....

The list has been dutifully uodated Jeff

A little something for future reference ...

... my 'short list' for tuning:

Round I

    DBCC UPDATEUSAGE

    UPDATE STATISTICS (with FULL scan) for all tables

    exec sp_recompile for all tables

    exec sp_refreshview for...

Is this a cluster ???

Have you applied SP2 to MOM ???

If this is a production server then you are limited. If you have a development/test server then you could use the Developer Edition, which has everything you need and more, and...

Since Windows caches DNS information you may have to resort to some specific windows level actions on your machines in addition to the abovementioned items.

For the clients this would be:...

I'd look into table partitioning. One partition per week.

There are many, many more that provide software as well. GE I have no faith in whatsoever. We have a GE system totally supported by them on a separate domain...

You may want to search this site for "parameter sniffing". It should provide some alternative and very important insights.

Check BOL - ALTER DATABASE, SIZE MAXSIZE,  GROWTH

and an example:

---

 alter database master modify file

  (name = master,

  size = 25MB,

  maxsize = 51MB,

  filegrowth = 25MB)

 go

 checkpoint

 go

 alter database master modify file

  (name = mastlog,

  size = 25MB,

  maxsize...

It may be a case of not having the proper PATH. Here's a few eye opening commands from the 'old' DOS days that may help:

• exec master.dbo.xp_cmdshell 'cd /d'
• exec master.dbo.xp_cmdshell 'echp %PATH%'
• exec master.dbo.xp_cmdshell 'set'

Are you running EM from your desktop or from the SQL Server ? What windows account are you logging in as ? Does the windows account that you are logging...