Acting on SQL Server errors

Some of you might have faced the situation when there is an error in the SQL Server error log or Windows Event logs but you do not know what to do about it. Examples of possible errors are below,

Error 1101
“Could not allocate a new page for database '%.*ls' because of insufficient disk space in filegroup '%.*ls'.”

Error 605
“Attempt to fetch logical page %S_PGID in database %d failed. It belongs to allocation unit %I64d not to %I64d.”

You probably copy and paste text of the error message in your favorite search engine and then browse through search results hoping to find the solution. There is nothing wrong with this approach but there is a simpler solution. Microsoft has "Events and Errors message center" which provides comprehensive list of error codes and messages for ALL Microsoft products. There you will find an explanation for the problem and user action including links to known KB-articles.

For example,

Error 1101:Explanation: No disk space available in a filegroup.
User Action: The following actions may make space available in the filegroup.
Turn on AUTOGROW.
Add more files to the file group.
Free up disk space by dropping unnecessary indexes or tables in the filegroup.

Error 605:Explanation: This error may be raised for any table if the allocation unit ID of the page does not match the expected allocation unit ID.
In general, this signifies page or allocation corruption. For more information about a page, see "Pages and Extents" in SQL Server Books Online.
User Action: Run DBCC CHECKTABLE against the table.
Run DBCC CHECKDB against the database.

I encourage you to give it a shot and see if it helps you resolving some of the issues you had difficulty with.

Hope this helps...