FIX: Deadlock on Table with Text/Image Column May Cause Errors (170296)

SYMPTOMS

Heavy stress that causes an extremely high number of deadlocks on a table with image/text columns may cause the following errors and cause the server to stop responding:

udread: Operating system error 38(Reached end of file.) on device 'C:\MSSQL\DATA\MASTER.DAT' (virtpage 0x00ffff00). Buffer 10da140 from database 'MSS' has page number 2855763 in the page header and page number -256 in the buffer header

mirrorproc: i/o error on primary device 'C:\MSSQL\DATA\MASTER.DAT'

udread: Operating system error 6(The handle is invalid.) on device 'C:\MSSQL\DATA\MASTER.DAT' (virtpage 0x00000114).

udread: Operating system error 6(The handle is invalid.) on device 'C:\MSSQL\DATA\MASTER.DAT' (virtpage 0x00000394).

udread: Operating system error 6(The handle is invalid.) on device 'C:\MSSQL\DATA\MASTER.DAT' (virtpage 0x00000105).

bufwait: timeout, BUF_IO, bp 0x10fdea0, pg 0x110, stat 0x1004/0x6, obj 0x1d906ebe, bpss 0

The errorlog is filled with bufwait error messages until server is killed (it cannot shut down normally); all existing connections become unresponsive, and no new connection can be made.

This problem only happens infrequently on very high performance servers. In the scenario in which Microsoft was able to reproduce these errors, an SMP computer with fairly high CPU speed was required, and even then this problem only surfaced occasionally.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in SQL Server 6.5. This problem has been corrected in Service Pack 5a for Microsoft SQL Server 6.5.For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

197177 INF: How to Obtain SQL Server 6.5 Service Pack 5a

For more information, contact your primary support provider.