This is Classic, so yes, automatic sweep is disabled.  My understanding is that gbak does a sweep while doing a backup, which happens nightly, so sweep should be happening then (if I understand it correctly that is).  Also, running a manual sweep hangs indefinitely.

As for the active transaction, restarting Firebird doesn't fix the problem.  The ONLY thing that fixes the problem is restoring from a backup file to create a fresh file.  According to Sinatica, there are no active transactions while the problem is being exhibited.  I will check the raw MON tables, but would restarting the Firebird service not terminate any active transactions?

Thanks for all the quick responses!

Ryan