I didn't get a good quote here about shiny bits. I kind of forced it. I'd welcome suggestions...

Thanks and one minor note. Someone pinged me about me using freedom, as in liberty, when saying that it can be a problem. My use was intended to be freedom...

Are you talking filegroups?

The objects are all in one location, in the filegroup on disk. Not sure it matters other than trivia. AFAIK, an object cannot cross filegroups, so an...

you are welcome, and one thing I'd do is document what you do as you go along, and then save copies for yourself (and put it on a blog).

I've carried...

I work for Red Gate, so I'll mention Response. I wasn't thrilled early on with the way it worked, but I think that's because I was looking for something else....

Interesting thread, and some good info.

Here's the weird one. What if you have a 32bit VM on a 64bit host. do you want to know the host platform? I'm...

I don't remember this being a concern for me ever. Other than looking annoying in reports, or being unable to remove the user if they owner a database, but I...

Is this production?

As mentioned if you want SSIS, it will be only one version. A couple other services are not instance aware.

Otherwise, same issues as any other multi instance box....

One small addition. I'd make sure they all use their Windows account, not SA, to make changes. It will help them to be respectful towards each other, and provide a...

In 2000, if you use the built in mail, you have to use Outlook, or a MAPI complaint system. You can get some SMTP senders, like XPSMTP (http://www.sqldev.net/xp/xpsmtp.htm), but that's...

This isn't stored in the system tables, AFAIK. There are likely ways to read the IAM, SGAM, pages and relate this back to an object, but I'm not sure. The...

the error you posted seemed to indicate appends. Definitely check that.

There are some good scripts here on the site for backups that can help if you want to look at...

Is that the bent, Natural shape keyboard with the two halves separated? I tried those, but since I use my left index for "y", it didn't work for me.

I have...

there are places for improvement, and the code in the article was updated in an earlier comment. I have updated the article to reflect that.

I think SELECT is a good...

Are you appending backups to an existing file?

Don't do that. It increases your risk dramatically. If there is a file issue, and there could be as it grows, then you...