Any way to kill it and save QA?

mbourgon

So, I decided to move from 2 to 3. (3.10.1, I believe). Big mistake. It never finished the initial snapshot save - so, a day later, I killed it. Started it back up, hoping to get rid of the little window (and that it would work).

However, it locked up my Query Analyzer window, which has unsaved work. I tried killing it again, but that didn't help. At this point, I'm at a loss. I'd like to get back my work, but I can't get QA to respond. (clicking on it does nothing - tried clicking on a menu and it flashed a whole bunch, really quickly, but now I just have blank grayed out screen.)

Any ideas? Any other tasks/processes I can kill to try and recover QA? Any way to save the queries I have?

Brian Donahue

Hi,

I take it you have tried uninstalling it? SQL Prompt for Query Analyzer is slightly different than for Management Studio in that it doesn't hook into Query Analyzer as a plugin, it runs a process that communicates with query analyzer. If the SQL Prompt 3 icon is not in the system tray or it is not running, then it should have no effect on Query Analyzer.

mbourgon

I take it you have tried uninstalling it? SQL Prompt for Query Analyzer is slightly different than for Management Studio in that it doesn't hook into Query Analyzer as a plugin, it runs a process that communicates with query analyzer. If the SQL Prompt 3 icon is not in the system tray or it is not running, then it should have no effect on Query Analyzer.

Would that were the case. However, once QA is borked, even uninstalling SQL Prompt doesn't return it to a usable state. Wound up learning a lesson.... save before using SQL Prompt. Sorry, guys - still a great idea with promising results but mediocre implementation. The annoying part is that when it works, it's awesome and hard to live without- then you run into things like this that make you curse its existence. It's worse than a clock that's stopped - this clock is right most of the time, then stops when you need it most.
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Lionel

Hi does QA not start at all then? If it does not do you get an error when you run it from the command line. SQL Prompt does not actually change any of the QA files at all so if you have removed SQL Prompt and rebooted your machine (Just to be sure Prompt is gone) QA will be in exactally the same state as before installing SQL Prompt. If it is still not working then some files might have got corupted when it crashed (Although that seems very unlilely). If that is the case it is probably worth checking the QA registry settings to see if there is coruption in there and if there isn't then I will try to sugest some other things.

Bart Read

Yes, I'm afraid I have to concur on that. We (very deliberately) don't make any changes to any QA files or registry settings. If therefore after uninstalling SQL Prompt and restarting your machine QA still doesn't open then I have to suggest that your problem lies elsewhere.

What I can say is that unfortunately you are unlikely to be able to recover the unsaved work you had when QA locked up. I can only apologise for that. I'm assuming this does mean that at some point SQL Prompt was working in QA?

Whilst I can imagine a scenario where SQL Prompt might lock up QA (we found a few cases during testing but it'd been stable for quite some time before release so we were obviously hoping they were all sorted out), as I said above, I find it very hard to imagine that it could completely break your QA install.

Again, unrelated to SQL Prompt, I have seen a problem where Enterprise Manager simply stops working and gives an error message every time you try to start it, even after a client tool reinstall. No idea why although it wasn't a huge problem at the time because I was able to use SSMS instead, but it sounds like a similar kind of problem and sounds like perhaps the kind of thing that might be caused by a hotfix from Windows Update or something.

Sorry I can't be more help than that.


Thanks,
Bart

mbourgon

Sounds like I miscommunicated - my main concern was getting back the work I hadn't saved. I wound up killing it and losing the work. QA does work (it was just that running instance that was borked), and I took this opportunity to upgrade my desktop tools to SP4. Maybe that will help.

Bart Read

Hmm, that might be it. We don't officially support anything less than SP3a so upgrading the tools might fix the problem. Please let us know if you encounter anything else.
Thanks,
Bart