Patch for KB948110 causing random "Could not find database table ID"errors

[Larry Leonard]

Running MSDE 2000 SP2 on Windows XP SP3.

I have a T-SQL script that is relatively simple (adding constraints,
inserting rows, etc.) and short (maybe 300 lines, heavily commented).
It's an upgrade script I wrote weeks ago, and has worked fine
everywhere.

After the patch from last Wednesday. "Security Update for SQL Server
2000 Service Pack 4 (KB948110)", I have gotten the following error on
two different machines, using a copy of the script from our source
control that is known to be many weeks old, and to have worked:

Server: Msg 615, Level 21, State 1, Line 1
Could not find database table ID 8, name 'MyDatabase'.

The script gets this error about 75% of the time - and sometimes it
runs fine. When it fails, I cannot locate the exact line of code - it
seems to be random. I've never seen this error message before, and
Google Groups has no hits for "Could not find database table ID".
Google Web has about 15 hits, all of which seem unrelated.

Googling for "KB948110" has led to a handful of people having various
problems with this patch, but not mine. I did notice someone complain
that the patch had been applied to SQL Server 2000 SP3 database when
it should not have. This made me realize that this SP4 patch had been
applied to my MSDE 2000 SP2 database, which I assume it should not
have.

Uninstalling the patch fixed the problem. Interestingly, re-
installing the patch did not bring back the error message.

Some interesting links:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;224071
http://simultaneouspancakes.com/Less...nd-sharepoint/
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive...3-servers.aspx

Anyone else seeing this? Anyone know if Microsoft aware of it?
Thanks.

[Erland Sommarskog]

Larry Leonard (La***@definitivesolutions.com) writes:

Googling for "KB948110" has led to a handful of people having various
problems with this patch, but not mine. I did notice someone complain
that the patch had been applied to SQL Server 2000 SP3 database when
it should not have. This made me realize that this SP4 patch had been
applied to my MSDE 2000 SP2 database, which I assume it should not
have.

It sounds scary that the hotfix installed despite that you were only on SP2.
Then again, the download pages says "Security Update for SQL Server 2000
Service Pack 4 and MSDE 2000" without any service pack indication for
MSDE. Yet, then again, I don't get less scared if this really means that
the hotfix would install itself on MSDE 2000 RTM if it got the chance.

Uninstalling the patch fixed the problem. Interestingly, re-
installing the patch did not bring back the error message.

You didn't consider installing SP4 while you were at it? :-)

I don't know exactly what is in this hotfix, but SP3 (and SP4 of course)
includes the fix for the Slammer worm, which is far bigger threat than
the issues addressed by this hotfix. And that vulnerability was not in
the engine itself, so may still not have that protection. (Unless you
have previously installed the hotfix for SP2 for Slammer.)

As for the error message, the condition is gone, so it's not easy to
repeat and examine, so I guess that all you can do is to chalk up one
more for the green man in the machine. :-)

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, es****@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...ads/books.mspx
Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinf...ons/books.mspx

[Larry Leonard]

It sounds scary that the hotfix installed despite that you were only on SP2.

Then again, the download pages says "Security Update for SQL Server 2000
Service Pack 4 and MSDE 2000" without any service pack indication for
MSDE.

Well, I finally discovered it has nothing to do with the MS patch – I
“ghosted” an image from April that fails the exact same way.

You didn't consider installing SP4 while you were at it? :-)

If I could move up to SP4, you think I'd still be using 2000 at
all? :-)

As for the error message, the condition is gone, so it's not easy to
repeat and examine, so I guess that all you can do is to chalk up one
more for the green man in the machine. :-)

It's easy to repeat now: it’s happening on five machines, each with
their own MSDE database. I finally tracked it down to the USE
command: these two lines, believe it or not, give me the “Could not
find database table ID #, name 'x'” error:

USE MyDatabase
DECLARE @X INT

Fortunately, I can re-write my short script to use the
database.dbo.table syntax.

This ( http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/...base-name.aspx
) is exactly what I’m experiencing, but all our collations are set to
the default of LATIN1_GENERAL_CP1_CI_AS, so I don’t think it’s a
collation problem.

I wonder if something’s gang agley in the master database? When I say
“SELECT name FROM sysdatabases”, I see all my databases, so why
doesn’t USE see them? How hard is it to rebuild master?

[Erland Sommarskog]

Larry Leonard (La***************@gmail.com) writes:

>It sounds scary that the hotfix installed despite that you were only on
SP2. Then again, the download pages says "Security Update for SQL
Server 2000 Service Pack 4 and MSDE 2000" without any service pack
indication for MSDE.

Well, I finally discovered it has nothing to do with the MS patch – I
"ghosted" an image from April that fails the exact same way.

If I understand this right, you get this error on MSDE 2000 SP2, without
the security fix as well?

This ( http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/...base-name.aspx
) is exactly what I'm experiencing, but all our collations are set to
the default of LATIN1_GENERAL_CP1_CI_AS, so I don't think it's a
collation problem.

I cannot see any connection between your error and that link. When I think
of it, the error message is:

Server: Msg 615, Level 21, State 1, Line 1
Could not find database table ID 8, name 'MyDatabase'.

Database table 8 is sysfiles1. Let's see, is the database set to auto-close?
If it is, SQL Server would have to open it, and to find all files, in
needs to look in one of sysfiles and sysfiles1, to find any secondary
files.

Notice that the severity of the level is 21, which is a very high level.
Books Online says:

Severity Level 21: SQL Server Fatal Error in Database (dbid) Processes

These messages indicate that you have encountered a problem that
affects all processes in the current database; however, it is unlikely
that the database itself has been damaged.

So this is an error that "should not occur". I would suspect a bug that
thrashes an internal memory or somesuch.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, es****@sommarskog.se

Books Online for SQL Server 2005 at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...ads/books.mspx
Books Online for SQL Server 2000 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinf...ons/books.mspx