At 04:30 PM 4/02/2005 +0000, you wrote:

>I am a new and trying-to-be user of Firebird. (and an old
>experienced Sql server DBA/user).
>
>I downloaded the zip file onto a nice clear machine running windows
>server 2003. I printed out the tons of release notes, read all the
>readmes, and ran the install_super (because I didn't realize the
>fancy windows installer was in a separate zip). then I migrated to
>the directory where the security fdb was, ran isql.exe, added my
>user, etc. opened a private db, and so on. Everything worked fine.
>
>Next day, the sys admin brought down the machine, unplugged it, and
>moved it into the official, air-conditioned server room. The
>Firebird service would no longer start. I uninstalled, reran the
>install -- appeared to work fine, but any connect gets error -904
>unavailable database.
>
>I read all the messages on the support line, and tried what the other
>guy did: I have now installed with the fancy installer, and then
>uninstalled, installed from the zip again, uninstalled, deleted and
>removed everything, tried again -- each time the service comes up,
>the registry is fine, etc, but: unavailable database.
>
>Clearly it is not corruption, because I wiped out and redownloaded
>the security fdb. Would something in a network card cause this?

Well, it's a proper precaution to test the network card. :-)

Get the Quick Start Guide from the Firebird website.

From your description of your installation procedure, the best guess is
that you have got things into one heck of a mess. You started in a place
where newbies didn't oughtta go and things just got worse from there.
Rather than suggest 101 things to check (groan) I strongly urge you to do a
complete cleanup and begin again, using the Windows installer program
(that's the kit with the filename suffix of ".exe". Leave anything ".zip"
well alone until you understand what goes on in an installation; and don't
download the "Embed" version by mistake.

To get things cleaned up, begin by shutting down any running server by
going to the command line and typing NET STOP
FirebirdGuardianDefaultInstance. If it doesn't find that service, then do
NET STOP FirebirdServerDefaultInstance.

Next, run a Remove via Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, if there
is any entry there for Firebird. However, in view of the history, there
may well be things left afterwards to clean up, from the previous attempts
with the zip file.

After that, go to where you installed Firebird. If you have conf files
and/or a security.fdb that you want to keep, store them somewhere
safe. Then delete the whole Firebird directory tree.

Next time around, with the Quick Start Guide to hand, run the installer. I
suggest taking all the defaults.

Make sure that, during the installation, you make an informed choice about
which server model you are going to install. The installer gives you the
choice of Classic and Superserver. If you need a client named gds32.dll and
it has to be in the machines system32 directory, then make sure those two
options are checked. Choose Run as a Service unless you know (and
understand) a reason to choose Run as an Application. Don't check off Use
Guardian unless you know how to configure services to restart automatically.

Once the installation finishes, the service(s) -- Guardian and Server --
will be up and running. It won't hurt to run the Services applet to
double-check.

./heLen