SQL Server Performance Forum – Threads Archive

Removing SQL 7 from a server w/ SQL 2000 also

Hi everybody! We have both a staging and a production environment that has both SQL 7 and SQL 2000 installed. A few months ago we made the change to SQL2000 but kept SQL 7 on the box for some reason (I wasn’t involved in this change over). The SQL 7 instance is the default one and the SQL 2000 is an additional named instance (sql2k for example). I’d like to remove SQL7 from our servers completely but am concerned about this since it is the default instance. Can this be done w/o affecting the sql 2000 named instance? Does SQL Server require a default instance be present? Thanks in advance!

In normal situation there is no problem to remove SQL 7.0. Default instance means something like, SQL choose then name instead you. Luis Martin
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Yes. Like Luis says, you should be able to remove the default SQL Server 7.0 instance even though it is a default instance. You can have just a named instance of SQL Server on the server without having a default instance (if it helps to know) I would advise the following steps:
– Try the steps forst on a Test Server and then on Production server
– Take a maintenance window for this task
– Backup all the databases – SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000
Including System databases (All MDF, NDF and LDF files)
– Secure them somewhere safe
– Uninstall SQL Server 7.0
– Delete any left-over directories and files from the installation directory
– Restart Server
– Ensure SQL Server 7.0 doesn’t exist and SQL Server 2000 is still there
– Look at the sql 2000 errorlogs to see if there are any issues
– Try using the SQL Tools and see if all of them still work
– If everything is fine, test your application to run against this sql database
for sanity checking [8D]
– You should be done now.
– Document the exact steps you took and problems you faced so that it will aid you
in doing the same on Production Servers HTH! Thanks,
— Sri Thanks,
— Sri

Thanks for the help guys! I will be doing this first on our Staging environment (and will probably follow the steps you laid out Skasm <img src=’/community/emoticons/emotion-1.gif’ alt=’

‘ /> ) and will leave it for a week before doing the same steps on our production site. Thanks everyone!

Hi ya, I must admit that we opted to just disable the sql 7 services rather than remove it from our production machines. Especially as we at that stage were planning to move to win2003… In general there is no real problem with leaving sql 7 dormant on the machine (other than tidyness, and it using up the default instance) but it might be interesting to weigh up the risk versus the benefit? Cheers
Twan

I second Twan’s suggestion to disable SQL 7 services rather than removing them, and for a specific reason if you need to install SQL 2K as default then upgrade the edition. Satya SKJ
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We do have it disabled but twice now for some reason (once after a reboot, once out of the blue) SQL 7 has started and our applications have failed. We just want to get rid of it completely. I think one of the times that SQL 7 got enabled someone was accessing that instance from Query Analyzer. Would that start the instance if it was already disabled? I doubt it but thats what looks like happened. Thanks for everyones replies.

Hi ya, if you set the service to disabled (rather than just manual and stopped) then the only way to get the service to start is to re-enable the service again (either from the services applet or through group policy configuration) You could also rename the sql server executable in the sql7 directory if you wanted to be safe… I’d just be wary of removing components like this, where there could be shared bits and pieces. I’m not saying that I’ve ever heard of a problem with uninstalling sql 7, but then I’d still err on the side of caution <img src=’/community/emoticons/emotion-5.gif’ alt=’;-)’ /> Cheers Twan

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