SQL Server Q&A

Symptoms
In the Configure Publishing and Distribution Wizard, if you select the option to customize the settings rather than accept the default values, you are given the opportunity to change the distribution database name from its default of “distribution.” Although you cannot type a space character in the Distribution Database Name box, it does accept a space character if you copy a text string (for example, “my database”) to the clipboard and paste it in.
If the name you use contains a space character, the database is still created. However, if the name that you paste in begins with a space character (for example, ” my database”), the wizard fails with the following error message:

SQL Server Enterprise Manager could not configure ’server_name’ as the distributor for ’server_name’.
Error 14262: The specified @database_name (‘db_name’) does not exist.
Resolution
To work around this problem:do not use spaces in the name
-or-
make sure that the database name you are pasting in does not contain a leading space character.

Symptoms
Restoring a database backup on Microsoft Windows 98 fails if all the following conditions are met:The file size of the restored database is 2 GB or greater.
The database is being restored over an existing database that is less than 2 GB even if there is more than 2 GBs of free disk space.Here is an example of the error message that might occur:

Server: Msg 3257, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
There is insufficient free space on disk volume ‘D:\MSSQL7\DATA’ to create the database. The database requires 2352873472 additional free bytes, while only 2147155968 bytes are available.
Server: Msg 3013, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Backup or restore operation terminating abnormally.This error message occurred while attempting to restore a 2 GB database over a newly created or existing database that was less than 2 GB. The restored database file (.mdf) would have been 2,352,873,472 bytes in size.
Resolution
On Microsoft Windows 98, a different Win32 function is called to determine how much free space is available. The function that is called returns a maximum of 2 GB free space.
For additional information about the Win32 function, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
231497?(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/231497/EN-US/) INF : Understanding and Using GetDiskFreeSpace and GetDiskFreeSpaceEx