Symptoms
When restoring the backup of a database, which is enabled for Transactional and Merge Replication (Sysdatabases.Category = 5), to a non-published database on a different server, the merge replication system tables are not dropped and the user tables on the destination server’s database cannot be dropped. If the backup is restored on the same server (different database), then the restore works fine and the replication information is removed.
Also, the restore works fine across servers when the source database is enabled either for Transactional or Merge Replication only (Sysdatabases.Category = 1 OR 4).
Resolution
To work around this problem, you can either:Enable the source database for Transactional or Merge Replication alone (Sysdatabases.Category = 1 OR 4).
-or-Drop the merge system tables using the DROP TABLE syntax.NOTE: Contact Microsoft Product Support Services if you need to drop the user tables and are unable to do so.