Sometimes a very large database (VLF) stalls and or takes forever and a day to perform a 2 minutes task. In these fun times we restart the server. It gets funner when the server is back online and your database is IN RECOVERY.
This generally happens prior to the server restart, you still have large transactions running (i.e. millions/billions or records being DELETE/UPDATE/INSERT).
To check on the status of your database simply run
EXEC sys.sp_readerrorlog 0, 1, ‘Your_Database_MDF_Name’
At this point, you can’t use sp_helpfile because your database is inaccessible therefore navigate to where the mdf file is located. Most of the time, the mdf file is the same name as your database.
When you run the command above, in your message tab you’ll see the percentage of completion and how many seconds to go.
