Gila

I dont disagree with you completely. I still maintain there are instances where nolock helps performance. Here is an article I've referenced before:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Performance+Tuning/2764/

I look forward to your...

Lookup tables are actually your least concern when it comes to NOLOCK. You could as easily just TABLOCK if it's a large lookup table and avoid the massive lock...

You could try a repair buy my experience is generally to remove, reboot, then reinstall.

Then it sounds like you either don't have permissions or there is something wrong with the system where you cannot make updates to the registery. If you are 100% sure...

Start > Run > type Regedit (WinXP)

Start > Search > type Regedit (Vista, Win7)

Well the DLL is in your system32, and without looking to make sure it's registered in the registry, I would guess something hasn't refreshed in the GUI. I seem to...

It means you need to run the sqlncli.msi to install the driver. I'm assuming you did that.

Have you tried creating a new data source using the SQL Native Client...

IT depends... lol! If you can afford to read data that may not be commited yet, in favor of not locking the table and thus improving performance, then using it...

Also can you verify that sqlncli10.dll actually exists in C:\Windows\System32\ ?

Do you have any errors in the system or application log?

First off, I would make sure you had the latest driver. Try downloading it from the Feature Pack site. Keep in mind that client is backwards compatible to at least...

Based on your additional information I would strongly recommend checking out that red gate tool. It's truly amazing. It's a good place to start. If I'm not mistaking there is...

If it's a home grown application generally I'll ask the developers or BSAs. Generally they can help you understand the application and if you can understand that then you can...

I would create a temporary table before your cursor. I would then construnct an insert statement to insert into the results from the DMV into the temporary table. Then at...

you may also want to look at sys.master_files it is in the master database however it provides a more global over view for the data you are trying to get...