Microsoft Fixes Performance Problem in SQL Server 2000

Microsoft has released a hotfix for a problem that significantly reduces SQL Server 2000 performance. When you use trace flag 9134 to prevent error message 601 in SQL Server 2000, SQL Server performance is significantly reduced. Error 601 is logged to the SQL Server 2000 error log and occurs if the page at the current position of the scan is deleted when you scan with the NOLOCK locking hint or with the transaction isolation level set to READ Uncommitted. The performance problem occurs because setting trace flag 9134 to TRUE causes additional reads to test whether the page is allocated and linked correctly. This check traverses Index Allocation Map (IAM) chains and Page Free Space (PFS) pages. This behavior causes the additional reads and slowdown. To find out more about this problem and the supported hotfix, read the Microsoft article "FIX: Performance is significantly reduced when you set trace flag 9134 to prevent error message 601 in SQL Server 2000" at

   http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=891201&SD=tech