Decision Flow for Server Recovery and Database Repair

You may experience trouble starting a server or database, or connecting to or verifying a database.

1. Does the server start?

   If yes, go to step 2.

   If no, see Server Operational Issues. If you cannot start the server after following these suggestions in this section, see Starting a Server in Forced Recovery Mode and start the server in forced recovery mode.

   If the server does not start in forced recovery mode, call Technical Support. You may need to restore the database from backup.

2. Can you connect to the database?

   If you cannot connect to the database, see Database Connection Issues for troubleshooting suggestions.

   If you can connect to the database and you previously started the server in forced recovery, see Analysis of Allocation Problems for information on verifying database allocation and recovering leaked blocks.

   If you can connect to the database, but suspect the database may be inconsistent, see Database Verification for information on checking the consistency of your database.

3. The server is running and you can connect, but you want to verify the consistency of your database.

   If you previously started the server with forced recovery or you suspect database inconsistency, run DBCC checks to validate the database. See Database Verification for information on checking both index consistency and database allocation.

4. The server is running, you can connect, you have run DBCC checks, and you need to repair the index inconsistencies or allocation problems detected by DBCC.

   If sp_iqcheckdb reports errors in the Index Summary and Index Statistics sections of the results, see Index Error Repair for the procedure to repair index problems using DBCC.

   If sp_iqcheckdb reports errors in the Allocation Summary and Allocation Statistics sections of the results, see Repairing Allocation Problems using DBCC for the procedure to repair allocation problems using DBCC.