How to gain exclusive access to SQL Server 2005 database to restore?

Question

Whenever I restore a backup of my database in SQL Server I am presented with the following error:

Msg 3101, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Exclusive access could not          


        

Answer 1

You can force the database offline and drop connections with:

EXEC sp_dboption N'yourDatabase', N'offline', N'true'

Or you can

ALTER DATABASE [yourDatabase] SET OFFLINE WITH
ROLLBACK AFTER 60 SECONDS

Rollback specifies if anything is executing. After that period they will be rolled back. So it provides some protection.

Sorry I wasn't thinking/reading right. You could bing back online and backup. There was also a post on Stack Overflow on a T-SQL snippet for dropping all connections rather than binging offline first: Hidden Features of SQL Server