If you upgrade to Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 on a linked SQL Server, it can stop the Distributed Transaction Controller (DTC) from working. Why is this? Well, it's Microsoft's way of tightening up security, but it can leave you with a connection that no longer works. Follow this easy article and re-establish your connection in just a matter of minutes.

Knowing when to apply a service pack to SQL Server isn't as straight forward as you might first think. Do you apply it as soon as Microsoft releases it, or wait a while and see what problems arise? What if you don't apply it? We put these questions and more to our expert DBA and asked, "Just when is the best time to apply a new service pack?".

When you have more than one instance of SQL Server on a single box and you want to apply a service pack to each instance, you have to repeat the process for each installation. Here's a much quicker way to upgrade all instances on a single box in just ten easy steps to save you heaps of time.

Applying a service pack to SQL Server in production and development environments can have different impacts because the set-up of each environment is somewhat different. What's the best way to go about this and can you apply the same principles to both systems? Use this article to plan how you're going to roll out your service pack upgrades.

Virtual machines are gaining ground in both reliability and cost-effectiveness in a production environment. As VMs become a normal part of every day server room installs, they are helping in a seemingly invisible way to help reduce climate change. Possibly not the first advantage that may have come to mind when you installed yours...

Strange things can happen in the world of development and even stranger things seem to happen when SQL Server service packs are involved. In this case it's a matter of disappearing job properties in Management Studio before the service pack had even been applied. If weird things are occurring inside your client tools, then read this article.

Database mail is a great way of getting SQL Server to tell you when it's done something. Or, when it's not done something and a job has failed. You can use it to keep you informed of actions by sending an email to you, whether you're at your desk or on the road with your laptop or mobile, as long as you have an internet connection, you can get SQL Server to keep you updated.

So you're the top dog for data in your company. The DBA. Responsible, stable and reliable. That's you. But are you doing anything which could jeopardize your company's data or even your career? This light-hearted look at the things a DBA should never do covers some serious points and is essential for existing DBAs and anyone thinking of a career change...

SQL Server Management Studio makes it easy to right click and generate a script to create databases. That's all well and good but what happens when you need to schedule such a task? Did you even know it was possible? This article looks at how you can use a little utility called SCPTXFR.EXE to schedule the creation of databases.

This interesting error is generated when SQL Server tries to take an exclusive lock on the Model database. Use this article to solve this error message and also make sure you don't face it again in the future.