This is an explanation on how to configure a sandbox virtual machine for website development. My reason for doing this is two fold; first, it protects my important daily work from potential desaster and secondly it allows me to develop code that will run on a different operating system. My host os is Ubuntu 8.04 but most of the work I do is run on Windows servers and because of this old code was not created with case-sensitivity in mind.

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Today I had the strangest thing happen. I turned on my laptop and found my SQL Server Express (2005) service came up with one of the databases saying "restoring...". Nothing I did could make it go away (restarting the computer, restarting sql server, nothing). Also, there was nothing I could do in the tasks like detach the db. It just kept erroring saying the database was in the process of restoring. Finally after some Google searching I came across this ExpertsExchange question (http://www.experts-exchange.com/Microsoft/Development/MS-SQL-Server/Q_22875577.html).

The answer is to execute this sql:

RESTORE DATABASE [your database name] WITH RECOVERY

I'm going to have to look into what actually was going on but right now I've got stuff to do...