Rusty Badger

As a Mac user with clients who are Windows based, I use VMWare Fusion to host a Window XP virtual machine, primarily to enable me to run SQL Server.  Until recently, this was SQL 2000, but as a project I’m currently working on uses SQL 2005, I decided to finally upgrade my VM yesterday.

Everything appeared to go fine, until I tried to restore a backup of a SQL 2005 database onto my newly upgraded server – it basically refused to let me restore the file!

The error message read:

Too many backup devices specified for backup or restore; only 64 are allowed.
RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 3205)

Google quickly answered the question: I was trying to restore a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database onto a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 instance.

(Thanks to: http://www.sqlcoffee.com/Troubleshooting023.htm)

Huh!  I thought I had just upgraded?

Some more Googling and I found a suggestion to change the compatibility level of the new, empty database I was trying to restore into.

That idea was quickly scuppered by this message: “Valid values of database compatibility level are 60, 65, 70, or 80″

Pants!

It looks like the SQL 2005 upgrade installed the nice shiny new interface, but didn’t touch the underlying database engine – that’s kind of an issue.  B->

Even more Googling and I’m now regretting the decision not to run the Upgrade Advisor, as it would have highlighted some problems that needed attention before the database engine could be upgraded.

So, as I didn’t fancy working through a long checklist of potential problems and in order to quickly carry on with the work I need to get done this weekend, I’m installing SQL 2005 onto a fresh XP VM while I type these notes up – I’ll have separate VMs for 200 & 2005 – not ideal, but I can live with that.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 10:38 am and is filed under Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.