Danf

Never mind, I was being an idiot (it's been a long couple of days...). It seems the backup I was using was the incomplete one generated during the failed patch attempt. The backup I'd set off manually prior to applying the patch is now restored and sims appears to be working. Many thanks for your advice, it's greatly appreciated.

Thanks, your second suggestion inspired me to stop the sql service, ensure i had multiple additional copies of the mdf/ldf files and rename the originals to keep them out of the way when i restarted the sql service. Don't know why i didn't think of that in the first place. so, on with the restore.... restore detected an error in database 'sims' as read from the backup set. oh well.. lots of older backups to try...

That's exactly what we've been doing for a while now. Unfortunately a recent patch has messed things up and I need to restore a backed up version. Attempting to restore through dbattach /restoreui fails 'exclusive access could not be obtained because the database is in use'. Nobody is logged in, I've restarted the sql service, even restarted the server with no luck. Any ideas on what to try next would be gratefully received