thanks glen for the excellent and comprehensive information.

I tried copying database pubs from SP4 to SP3 sql 2000 server using both backup-restore and detach-attach method and they all worked fine without any errors.I think I shoukdnt have...

Really? Let me try this with pubs or northwind db first and see what happens.

Any suggestions are welcome,guys?

SQL was clustered around a year back and i had installed client tools separately on both nodes as well as Integration services.

I think I will just patch all nodes with...

Thanks for yr suggestion..but i have moved on from the time i used to do this around a year back.The server name in the xml file is the sql cluster...

Any suggestions guys?

Well,all this communication related stuff is fine and I would be really able to confront them when they come to me saying that off late they havent been able to...

That seems to be another good solution,which will impose server-wide restriction on executing truncate log statements.Thanks for the tip.

I know who is running these backups.It is small group of application owners who happen to have some basic SQL Admin knowledge.They are not sysadmins,but they do have db_owner permissions...

Disabling access is not an option as there might be 100s of users,anyone of whom might run the backup command.

Heres the solution I have tested and which is more specific...

Thanks for the suggestion.

This however lets me trace the backup event and the login from which it happens.How does it serve my objective of NOT ALLOWING this event to happen...

I am sorry if I was not clear earlier.Logins do not fail after the node goes down,rather they begin to fail around 2-3 hrs prior to server going down.