How to restore a SQL Server database marked as "suspect"
At times a database appears to be marked as "suspect" in the Enterprise Manager. SQL Server marks a database as suspect with it can't access the database. What happens at a low level is that SQL Server sets one of the bits in the status field in the sysdatabases table.
In general, this problem has no trivial solution. A simpler case occurs when the file that hosts the database is renamed from the command prompt or Windows Explorer. In this case, you just have to restore the original file name and then manually restore the bit in the status field with this command:
update sysdatabases
set status = status & ~256
where name = 'MySuspectDatabase'
Keep in mind that the command above can be successful only after enabling writing to system tables.
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