alternatives to REPLACE on a text or ntext datatype

IF your data won't overflow 4000 characters AND you're on SQL Server 2000 or compatibility level of 8 or SQL Server 2000:

UPDATE [CMS_DB_test].[dbo].[cms_HtmlText] 
SET Content = CAST(REPLACE(CAST(Content as NVarchar(4000)),'ABC','DEF') AS NText)
WHERE Content LIKE '%ABC%' 

For SQL Server 2005+:

UPDATE [CMS_DB_test].[dbo].[cms_HtmlText] 
SET Content = CAST(REPLACE(CAST(Content as NVarchar(MAX)),'ABC','DEF') AS NText)
WHERE Content LIKE '%ABC%' 

Assuming SQL Server 2000, the following StackOverflow question should address your problem.

If using SQL Server 2005/2008, you can use the following code (taken from here):

select cast(replace(cast(myntext as nvarchar(max)),'find','replace') as ntext)
from myntexttable