task manager background process blocking

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task manager background process blocking

ziller

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Points: 897
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December 20, 2002 at 6:31 am

#64620

I am running SQL 2000 on NT4. SQL starts up fine, but seems to start with 9 BACKGROUND processes listed when I run sp_who2 after startup. These are 'task manager' processes. They do not seem to end, and begin blocking user processes. Is there any way to tell what is actually happening with these tasks? What process is actually being run?
Thanks for any info.

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mromm SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4301 More actions · Answer 1

Try to run

sp_who2 Active

instead of just sp_who2. It will show you what processes are actually doing something, not idle. Also, can you see what process ID is blocking your process? It is in the column BlkBy (Blocked By).

Michael

ziller SSC Eights! Points: 897 More actions · Answer 2

Thanks for the response. They also show up when I run sp_who2 'active'. They are not blocked by anything, but were blocking other user processes.

mromm SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4301 More actions · Answer 3

Run sp_lock @process_id to see what objects are blocked by the given process ID. then think why those objects might be blocked.

ziller SSC Eights! Points: 897 More actions · Answer 4

I wondering what those processes are? I see the usuall Lazy Writer, Log Writer, etc. but what processes would run under the Task Manager command? There are no schedule tasks currently running.

mromm SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4301 More actions · Answer 5

1. Run "sp_who2 Active" to see all the active prossese including the one that is blocked. See what Process ID blocks it (number in the column BlkBy; if dot instead of number, it is not blocked or blocked "by itself").

2. Run "sp_lock <Process ID>" where Process ID is the one you found in the step 1 to see all the exclusive locks by the process (locks marked by X).

3. Look for object Id of the objects that are ocked exclusively. Find the object names. Think why those objects might be locked. Resolve the issues.

It is hard to cover everything or resolve complicated issues in the mode of this forum. Sorry if this was not enough but hope it helps.

Michael

Antares686 SSC Guru Points: 125444 More actions · Answer 6

They sound like the internal processes. Are the spids below 10. If so I ran into a similar issue recently where the drive space was been filled and then I see the same type issue. Once I freed up space permanently I haven't see this again.

ziller SSC Eights! Points: 897 More actions · Answer 7

Yes, they are spid 5 - 12. I have definetly been running out of space lately, and have had a few user processes fail because they used up all the space on the drives. Maybe this is the issue.

Thanks for all the reponses.

Antares686 SSC Guru Points: 125444 More actions · Answer 8

Let us know if you get more space and things do not change. I have a 52GB drive array and the problems started for me under when I got under 4GB but not sure where and more specifically what was pushing the limit (mostly of tempdb) up that high but we do have a lot of very large reports run in the mornings when it failed.