Constant corruption of system MSSQL 2005 files

[googlemad]

We have a server with a fairly standard Microsoft SQL 2005 SP3 install, for some reason the system SQL files (i.e. master, msdb etc etc) seem to be corrupting at random under very little load.

 

I'm starting to think it could be disk hardware failure, is there a disk checking utility that works on Intel server motherboards and Samsung HD501LJ drives?

[AngryTechnician]

I assume you've already used chkdsk? You could also try Samsung's ESTool, not sure how well it plays with RAID though.

[googlemad]

I assume you've already used chkdsk? You could also try Samsung's ESTool, not sure how well it plays with RAID though.

 

Did try chkdsk a few weeks ago, may try it again. Just running the intensive scan on ESTool now, for some reason my boot CD didn't like the server but the ISO off the Samsung site works fine

 

For the record we have uninstalled and reinstalled SQL 3 - 5 times over the past few weeks and it always seems to end up back at the corrupt file issue! Also we can't use the command prompt to put the Sql Server service in single user mode when we want to because it complains our SQL install is either corrupt or has been tampered with!

[tarquel]

Few thoughts...

 

Does the server do anything else other than have a SQL 2005 install on it? i.e. running any other software on it, etc?

 

While its likely to be disc related, have you checked and/or swapped out the RAM modules? Even slightly duff RAM sticks could be causing it to corrupt etc IMO.

 

Regards

Nath.

[AngryTechnician]

Excellent advice, beat me right to it when I was thinking again about this earlier. Faulty RAM could absolutely cause this. The free version of memtest86 would be my recommendation for testing that.

[Michael]

I suspect it's either a combination of hard drive and memory or just one of the two. If you've run Scandisk and it comes back clean, then I suspect memory is the culprit. I presume you're using ECC memory? This is a must in any server.

[googlemad]

Did try chkdsk a few weeks ago, may try it again. Just running the intensive scan on ESTool now, for some reason my boot CD didn't like the server but the ISO off the Samsung site works fine

 

For the record we have uninstalled and reinstalled SQL 3 - 5 times over the past few weeks and it always seems to end up back at the corrupt file issue! Also we can't use the command prompt to put the Sql Server service in single user mode when we want to because it complains our SQL install is either corrupt or has been tampered with!

 

We rebuilt the server using a brand new hard drive and Server 2003 install, was getting the same 'Corrupt / Tampered' error on a fresh SQL install!

 

What Microsoft helpfully failed to point out is when using the SQLSERVR.EXE command line utility you need to do sqlservr.exe -s for it to work if using anything other than a Default Named Instance!!! (Finally found it on Google but how does 'Your SQL Install is corrupt / tampered with' error help me!