try BOL, search for "deadlocks, troubleshooting". This may help to trace where the deadlock is occuring.

HTH Andy

You could try not dropping the indexes, loading the data and then see which indexes need to be rebuild and then rebuild only those (there's a useful example on BOL...

Definitely worth using temp tables. We're seen query times (using joins to very large tables) dramatically improve - from hours to minutes. SQL server just seems to choose the wrong...

I have found occasions where dbcc dbreindex ('tablename') doesn't update all the statistics - I didn't get to the bottom of it, so to be safe I always run dbcc...

Thankyou for your replies. I'll try the startup stored procedure option

Andy

I've found a solution here http://www.sqldts.com/default.aspx?271

Thanks for your thoughts and replies.

Andy

Thanks Graeme

I tried this but it only gives me info on the last run of the job, not how long the job has been running if it is currently running.

Andy

Thanks Phill

My problem is that I can't seem to find where the job start time is stored. Any ideas?

Andy

how about doing an update but wrapping it in a transaction?

begin transaction

update table set column = value

--rollback transaction

execute the begin and the update, try your select from another window,...

Helen

I took the db offline (using sp_dboption), then brought it online using EM and restarted sql, the db came up online, which is not what I want unfortunately. I want offline...

Thanks Helen, I'll give it a go

But if the server crashed when the database was up, wouldn't the database just come back up when the server was restarted?

.... or you could use DTS, but bcp would be my choice. It depends what you're used to or comfortable with, GUI or command line.

I had a problem where QA hung occaisionally when saving SQL - a reinstall solved the problem.

I think bcp is your best bet.

bcp out using native format. Remove all indexes before you bcp in (unless the data is sorted in your clustered index order, in...