Hi...

We tried restarting the Instance... and even rebooted the server...but it didn't help.

REstarting the instance gave an error saying that maser db could not be read.

Hence had to restore the...

Thanks a lot, guys - for all your help and guidance.

I shall try restarting the SQL instance and also will try changing the setting - auto close to false...

Yes, we could successfully run CHECKDB on master, model, msdb the day before.No crashes.

Yes,the user databases are set to auto-close.

All system databases - master/msdb/model - give the same error.

Checkdb for the other db's ( user db's ) run successfully and do not report any error.

The user databases are placed...

There's enough free space on the drive where the database is stored, about 436 GB is free.

No databases have been moved at all.( However , the problem is with system...

The server has Express edition installed on it , so an explicit database snapshot is not allowed.

Since there's no 3rd party encryption/decryption filter driver , please guide what else could...

The system has - Standard Edition of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 , Servic Pack 2 installed.

Yes, it has NTFS file system.

Here's what the message window shows :

Msg 1823, Level 16, State 2, Line 1

A database snapshot cannot be created because it failed to start.

Msg 5123, Level 16, State 1, Line...

Here's what the message window shows :

Msg 1823, Level 16, State 2, Line 1

A database snapshot cannot be created because it failed to start.

Msg 5123, Level 16, State 1, Line...

We have an old version of SAN disk driver i.e. v5.03.c...Pls suggest if that can be the cause of problm....however , the checkdb returned no error/issues till yesterday. It was...

There's no such encryption/decryption software on our server , no space issues either...What else can be the problem ..?