BUG: Parallel Query May Stop Responding or Fail with 8650 Error Message (317821)

SYMPTOMS

If you configure SQL Server to use more than one processor on a multi-processor computer, and you run
a query that uses intra-query parallelism, the query may stop responding on Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 "Golden",
Service Pack (SP1), Service Pack (SP2), and Service Pack (SP3) versions . After you upgrade to SQL Server 7.0
Service Pack 4 ( SP4), you may receive the following error message:

Server: Msg 8650, Level 13, State 1, Line 1 Intra-query parallelism caused your server
command (process ID #7) to deadlock. Rerun the query without intra-query parallelism by using
the query hint option (maxdop 1).

If the max degree of parallelism option is set to zero, or greater than 1, you may receive the error message.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, use one of the following methods:

Set the max degree of parallelism option to 1 to suppress parallel plan generation. The default value is
zero (0). A zero value means use all available processors for query execution.

In Query Analyzer, run the following code to turn off max degree of parallelism:
```
sp_configure 'max degree of parallelism', 1

go

reconfigure with override

go
```
Add the OPTION (MAXDOP 1) query hint to the SELECT statement to disable parallel plan
generation for the specific query.

REFERENCES

For additional information, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

315662 FIX: Parallel Query May Encounter Undetected Deadlock with Itself

311104 FIX: The SELECT Statement with Parallelism Enabled May Cause an Assertion