Tuesday 3 May 2011

SBS 2011 Error–SQL Server Management Studio Hangs On Combined Help Collection

We are in the process of troubleshooting some issues with e-mailed reports from our own SBS 2011. While working our way through the SBSMonitoring database SQL Server Management Studio hung.

Eventually we saw a message with a Switch To button, a Cancel Operation button, and a Continue button that was all but useless. We had to figure out how to kill SSME.

When we did we got the following message:

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SQL Server 2008 R2 Combined Help Collection – Microsoft Document Ex…

SQL Server 2008 R2 Combined Help Collection – Microsoft Document Explorer cannot shut down because a modal dialog is active. Close the active dialog and try again.

Well, the only dialog box we kept getting every once in a while was the one with the three buttons with either two or three of them active. The Cancel Operation button did not work.

We tried to get to the Task Manager via CTRL+ALT+DLTE to no avail. Right clicking on the Task Bar produced the same results . . . nothing.

We ended up needing to copy ProcessExplorer onto the SBS 2011 desktop, opening it, and killing SSMS from there:

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Once SSMS was terminated we still could not get into the Task Manager so we needed to reboot the server. Once the server came back up things were working as expected.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

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