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Asked: 2026-06-15T18:57:17+00:00

I am dealing with a weird problem in SQL Server 2008. I previously had

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I am dealing with a weird problem in SQL Server 2008.

I previously had SQL Server 2005 installed on my local machine.

I have a backup of a SQL Server 2008 which has to be worked upon locally and then restored to the original database (work involves use of ad-hoc queries which is disabled on my server since it is hosted with an ISP.)

Problem:

The SQL Server 2008 is giving me the following error.

An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo)

The media family on device ‘D:\Data\F1\purt144_634889883032976839.bak’ is incorrectly formed. SQL Server cannot process this media family.
RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 3241)

Questions:

  • Can 2 or more versions of SQL Server co-exist on same machine? If yes why is the server instance showing version no 09.XXX (in the right hand section for SQL Server Management Studio 2008) version for SQL Server 2008 being 10.XX.

  • What could possibly be the problem apart from database being corrupted or backward compatibility issues?

Thanks.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Yes, you can have many instances of the same or of different versions of SQL Server installed on the same machine; so you can have one or more instances of SQL Server 2005 along with one or more instances of SQL Server 2008 (or of any other versions of SQL Server).

    0 (zero) or one of these instances will be the default (or unnamed) instance and all the others will be named instances.

    When upgrading from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008, depending on the options chosen, an existing instance (possibly but not necessarily the default instance if it exists) could have been upgraded from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 or a brand new instance of SQL Server 2008 could have been installed alongside.

    You should check the list of services to see the list of instances that you have on your machine. The SQL Server Configuration Manager that came with SQL Server 2008 will show you that under the SQL Server Services node.

    The one with the name MSSQLSERVER will be the default or unnamed instance because you can connect to it without specifying its name. All the others will be named instances.

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