Windows – Prevent Firebird Default Instance from Starting

firebirdstartupwindowswindows 8

I want temporarily to use another named instance. Can I prevent the default instance from starting when the PC starts? I am using Windows 8.1

Best Answer

There are two options

Manually change the startup type of the service
Remove (and optionally reinstall) the service

Manually change the startup type of the service

You can disable it in the Services configuration. Use Windows-key+R or open run from the start menu, enter services.msc, find the Firebird instance (Firebird Server - DefaultInstance), right click, Properties and change the Startup type from Automatic to Manual:

Remove (and optionally reinstall) the service

You can also remove the service entry completely, to do this, you need to start the command prompt as Administrator. Under Windows 10 this would be Windows-key+X, A. I believe this doesn't work under Windows 8.1, there you may need to use Start, search for cmd or Command prompt, right click and select Run as Administrator.

In the command prompt go to the location of your Firebird install (or for Firebird 2.5 and lower, its bin-folder), and run

instsvc stop
instsvc remove

If you want to have the service entry, but just not automatically started, you can reinstall it with:

instsvc install -demand

This will install the service with startup type Manual (just using instsvc install or instsvc -auto will install it as Automatic); see instsvc for more information.

Related Solutions

Windows – oracle failsafe – how to start instance in nomount

Shutdown instance in Cluster Manager (Right click, "Take Offline" or however you choose to do it)
Bring up Windows Services (Start->Run->Services.MSC) on the clustered server
Start the Oracle service for the instance you want
Now you can do whatever you like in SQL*Plus (Cluster Manager will still show it as down no matter what you do at this point)

So, if step 3 brings the Oracle instance up to "Open" you can do a shutdown immediate etc and then open it nomount.

HTH

Sql-server – Workarounds for setting default schema for domain group

Taking @Mr.Brownstone's idea, you could definitely try this:

DECLARE @sql nvarchar(MAX) = N'';

SELECT @sql += N'
  ALTER SCHEMA dbo TRANSFER custom_schema.' + QUOTENAME(name) + ';'
  FROM sys.objects
  WHERE SCHEMA_NAME([schema_id]) = N'custom_schema';

EXEC sys.sp_executesql @sql;

Now, it may be the case that you have foreign keys etc. that will need to be dropped and re-created (and I've shown how to automate that too), or as I mentioned in a comment, you may have explicit references to custom_schema in your existing objects. You may also have duplicate objects (say, dbo.Customers and custom_schema.Customers) that you'll need to handle. But the general idea should be sound.

Another workaround would be to upgrade to SQL Server 2012, where you can set a DEFAULT_SCHEMA for a domain group. I haven't tested this, but this Connect item says it has been made so.

In either case, I still think the app should be fixed eventually. As I've mentioned many times before, you should ALWAYS use an explicit schema prefix when creating or referencing objects.