At 05:47 AM 14/04/2005 +0000, you wrote:

>Nige,
>
>The extension of the database file is .GDB.
>
>Sorry, what are you suggesting?

What I think Nigel was alluding to was the problem in XP, where a utility
named SystemRestore targets files with a ".gdb" extension and forcibly
image-copies them when a request is made to open them. This is a
documented issue for XP: don't name database files with a ".gdb"
extension. (On Firebird 1.0, even renaming the database files doesn't
completely fix the problem, since the security database in that version has
a ".gdb" extension that can't be changed.)

Server2003 has a different little trick, called disk shadowing. I don't
think we've seen any evidence that changing the filename extension makes
the blindest bit of difference with disk shadowing. If Windows decides to
shadow your particular bit of disk when your first user wants to connect,
then your user is going to have to wait in line until DS has done its thing.

Someone mentioned a while ago a tool that you can download somewhere to
configure DS so as to exclude an entire disk partition. Sorry, I don't
know the link, but perhaps you'd like to google for it.

Paul Reeves has also mentioned some inexplicable pause (20 secs? 30 secs?)
that S2003 throws into the mix when remote clients attempt to log
in. Geoff Worboys has been collecting information about some other
OS-initiated pause in a TCP/IP connection, that S2003 seems to throw in at
random when data is streaming database-to-database, e.g. during a data pump.

These mysteries apart, there have also been reports of socket delays at
connection if Terminal Services are in the equation.

./hb