SqlServer is in script upgrade mode

Vista just finished one of its many updates. After restarting my computer I try connecting to SqlServer2008 instance with Sql Server Management Studio and I get this error:

Error connecting to '...\MSSQLSERVER2008'. Additional information: Login failed for user '...'. Reason: Server is in script upgrade mode. Only administrator can connect at this time. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18401).

Pressing help gets me to an internet page saying there's no additional information.

Thx Vista & Updates. Anyone an idea because on the internet I can't find anything about this issue.


It appears This Guy was having the same problems as you and his only suggestion was to wait a few minutes before trying to log in again.

I have yet to see any type of Microsoft documentation about this, nor have I seen any forum posts which came to any sort of resolution concerning the same problem.


Check your event viewer. I had the same problem and found that (in my case) it was looking for a directory that didn't exist to perform an upgrade script. NO hint that there was any sort of problem in the dialog, but the event viewer showed clearly what the problem was.

jim


I had the same problem. Waiting until update was done did not help. Solution was, (after checking Windows eventlog) to set the folder rights. SQL-Express had no rights on the database folder, why ever. Something has mixed up the rights during the upgrade from WinXP to Win 7. That was it.


Adding a comment to this page since this is the top Google result for "script upgrade mode". It seems that a number of things can cause a SQL Server DB to go into this mode. In our shop we've run into these two cases in the past months:

  1. Log shipping - Can't recall at what point of the process exactly the DB went into this mode, iirc it was when bringing it back up. The solution was just to wait it out.

  2. Hard drive full - The DB went into this mode when it ran out of space. We're currently clearing up the drive, will come back with an update if waking it up turns out to be challenging. Update: After freeing up disk space, it was a simple matter of setting the DB "Offline" and then "Online" to bring it back up.


We had the same issue, but needed to know what was going on in the background.

The db's were put into recovery mode, hence they had to recover. To assist we went to the SQL Server error log located where the system files (normally master, model, msdb...) are located, but under the log folder. In the ERRORLOG, we did a find on the word recovery and could watch the db's percentage recovered. Everything recovered normally, but it was much longer than expected.