asked
SQL service
I would appreciate if any one can tell me if I can check or use a script and tell what causes my SQL server instance to stop and what time it happened.
There are two places to look. First, the SQL Server log files themselves. [Here's how you can find where they are located][1]. It's basically going to be in the folder structure of your instance. They're just log files so you can open them in wordpad or notepad. By default there should be several. To see the last failure, open the open previous to the most recent one. Although, you can sometimes see the cause for a failure as part of the boot section at the front of the most recent log. The other place to look is in the Windows Event Viewer at the Windows Logs and the Application events. You can access this by right clicking on a computer and selecting Manage. One of these locations will generally tell you what happened. [1]:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd206993.aspx
Thanks Grant, that was helpful but I am still stack cos I am unable to open any of the log files in a note pad or any other similar program. Would that be permission issue? and the event viewer wasn't much of a help. May be the server isn't configured to write to the windows application log.
"unable to open the log files in notepad" - why? What was happening? They won't open in notepad by default, but if you open notepad, and then drag one of the files into the notepad window, you'll open it that way.
It doesn't write identical stuff to both sets of logs. The windows log will primarily be windows related information, but a crash frequently evidences itself there. If you're trying to open the most recent SQL Server log file while SQL Server is running, you may be prevented because the file will be locked. But you can read the logs through SQL Server Management Studio or through xp_readerrorlog.
yes.that was the issue. I wasn't able to open it cos sql was running. Now I can open and get the information I wanted. thanks for the help.
![alt text][1] [1]: /storage/temp/1502-capture.png I did it as you told me exactly and this attached screen shot is what I am getting.
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