the one thing chuck is best at...a roundhouse kick to the head!

http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/

I have an additional step after each backup that copies the backup file to a drive on the test server, i then use this to restore from on the test...

Simon, on Jan 8th there will be a fairly good sized group (hopefully) going out for a 58Km ride, mainly off road, around the Mendip Hills starting from Cheddar, should...

After a week stuck at a desk i like nothing more than hitting the trails (sometimes face first) on my mountain bike and sucking in some fresh air, also tinkering...

Totally agree.  Hey, the organisation i worked at just 6 months ago is still running some 98 boxes and they were just fine.

It appears that the codepage is 1252/Latin1 hence the unprintable character.  Its only a problem when the web based version of the application trys to display it.  The desktop version is...

What a great start to the morning, thanks very much.  I couldn't see the wood for the trees yesterday!

this is what i ended up with thanks to your post

update table

set...

Thanks for that, i'll see if any of the suggestions in those posts work.

I was using ascii(60) just as a test so it would stand out when i updated the...

Hopefully a bit closer to getting there!

By using this:

select ascii(substring(field4,19,1)), ascii(substring(field4,20,1)), ascii(substring(field4,21,1)),field4 from #tmp

i've discovered that the 20th character, the one thats causing the problem, has an ASCII code of...

Personally I like the off topic stuff, the rest of the newsletter etc covers all the technical stuff.  Good work Steve!!

does sp_helpuser 'username' help?  Run it from from the database in which the user exists.

Do they have access to Query Analyzer?

Thats great, looks to have solved it.  The server is still running version 7 and the name of the server hasn't been changed.  It looks like this 3rd party piece...

Don't know if this will help but..

If i want to preserve the original numbering when copying to a new table that has an identity column, i 'switch off' the identity...

I have a similar story.  My first job was working with DB2 and I was given the task of writting a housekeeping script using REXX to remove Image Copies (backups)...