At 08:48 PM 27/08/2004 -0400, you wrote:

>:: > I think I have this turned off. What is GDB to Windows?
>::
>:: Your guess is as good as mine. But, I think Ann answered that one.
>
>I didn't see other replies?

All it means is that it's an extension that WinXP has "earmarked" to be
automatically copied by the SystemRestore "feature" each time the file is
opened. What that means for a Firebird installation is that, each time the
first user logs into a database, he takes the hit of waiting for the
SystemRestore (which Firebird *doesn't* need or want in any shape or form)
to finish. On a biggish database, this can take a while.

On Superserver, it's the first user connecting because it causes the server
to open the database file with an exclusive lock. Of course, SystemRestore
gets there first, thus preventing the exclusive lock. On Classic, there's
no exclusive locking, which might be risky, if the user tries to access or
worse, update, a page that's in a block that SR has locked.

Since there's no simple way to "kill" anything on XP's preset hit-list (you
think you've got it dead, but it comes back on the next reboot) it's easier
to rename your database files with a different extension.

For a while, we owners of ".gdb" files were paranoid about this - was this
a dastardly ploy by M$ to kill us by stealth? But no, they're really too
nice to do something so evil. Someone eventually turned up some obscure M$
utility that uses the gdb extension for its files.

./heLen