Unable to Start MS SQL Server Database

Database Users or administrators can start Microsoft SQL server database from the task bar. To start, go to the task bar, open sq server service manager and then click on the start button. Sometimes MS SQL server is not start through this method and give some error message like

2011-11-20 10:15:39.87 server Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - 8.00.760 (Intel X86)
Dec 17 2002 14:22:05
Copyright (c) 1988-2003 Microsoft Corporation
Desktop Engine on Windows NT 5.1 (Build 2600: Service Pack 2)

Most possible reason for the above error message is “model is corrupt”. To resolve this, you can create a new copy of tempdb. This will fix the starting problem of SQL server database. If you still face the same problem then first of all make the backup of all MDF & LDF files.

How to Make Backup when Unable to Start SQL Server? As we have discussed, you are unable to start sql server then take a backup of data & log files by below steps:

• Set SQL server service manual by Windows control panel.
• Reboots the windows.
• Copy all the data and log file to the another computer or any removable media.

Attention: Don't try any methods until you have backup.

Have Backup? If Yes then use another copy of sql server with same version and level to restore model database using model.mdf & model.ldf. After restore, detach model database from new sql server and copy the data & log files to replace problem server. It is little bit messy to recover SQL server but not hard. In simple words, we can say that you will have to perform three steps:

        Restore-->Detach-->Copy (data & log files)

Doesn't Have Backup? If you don't have any backup of sql server database then it is recommended you to install a new copy of MS SQL server. When installation is complete the stop the service and copy the Model file to replace problem server.

Summary: SQL server database starting problem can be resolved by two method, one is restore-detach and another is new installation. Restore-detach method is hard in comparison of new installation method but it is effective.

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Exploring the concept of Page Corruption in MS SQL Server databases

No matter how reliable your database seems to be, you always have issues on the performance grounds. More interestingly, I found out that many performance issues relate to page corruption in SQL Server. It would be good to understand here what exactly is meant by ‘BAD_PAGE_PROCESS’. It usually occurs when the background suspect page logger stops running after every five seconds because of a large number of suspect pages. If you want to checkout suspect pages, run the following T-SQL command:

“select * from msdb.dbo.suspect_pages”

I took the help of DBCC CHECKDB on a corrupt SQL database to find out the actual issue and whether it is able to resolve it. Ran the following command:

“DBCC CHECKDB () WITH ALL_ERRORMSGS, NO_INFOMSGS”

Got errors similar to this one:

“Table error: Allocation page (1:1002912) has invalid PFS_PAGE page header values. Type is 0. Check type, alloc unit ID and page ID on the page.”

The PFS pages can neither be deleted nor reconstructed as there is no easy way to examine which pages are allocated or not.

Now, I tried to view the contents of the page by using the ‘DBCC PAGE’ command as follows:

“dbcc traceon(3604)

go

dbcc page(,1,1002854,0)”

After looking at the content of the page, I found that there was some corruption in the next page pointers. This seemed to be a bit weird as initially the next page pointer was like:

“m_nextPage = (1: 1002855)”

When I decided to look at the next page and ran:

“dbcc traceon(3604)

go

dbcc page('GBLDataWarehouse',1,1002855,0)

go”

It was now pointing to page 0:

“m_nextPage = (0:0)” & “m_prevPage = (0:0)”

Finally, used a recent backup to restore the database and got it up and running once again. But again, it was wise to see where the issue occurred.

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