Visual Studio 2015: SignTool.exe location

The SignTool is available as part of the Windows SDK (which comes with Visual Studio Community 2015). Make sure to select the "ClickOnce Publishing Tools" from the feature list during the installation of Visual Studio 2015 to get the SignTool.

Once Visual Studio is installed you can run the Signtool command from the Visual Studio Command Prompt. By default (on Windows 10) the SignTool will be installed at C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86\signtool.exe.

SignTool Location:

SQL SERVER – Database Stuck in “In Recovery” Mode After Restart

Whenever there is a restart of SQL Server, all databases would undergo “Recovery” process. This is the stage where the database has to come back online in a consistent state. 
There are three sub-phases with-in the process. Analysis, Roll forward and Rollback. The names are pretty self-explanatory. Let me explain for those who are interested to learn in detail: 

• Analysis: This is the phase where SQL Server would go through the LDF file and build the in-memory structures to know how much work is needed in the next two phases
• Roll forward (redo): During the shutdown of the database, there might be transactions which are committed but not yet written to the MDF file via checkpoint.
• Rollback (undo): If there were any transactions which were uncommitted then they have to be rolled back to bring the database to a consistent state.

When we would see database in “InRecovery” state?

• Restart of SQL Server.
• Database offline and online.
• Restore of database from backup.

All of the above would is called “recovery” process of the database and all databases must go through three phases as explained earlier.



What are the possible causes?

• Huge size of transaction log file.
• SQL restarted during a long running transaction.
• Huge number of VLFs.
• Hitting a bug which is fixed in SQL Server. Refer some KB below.

List of known issues

If you are running SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008 R2 or SQL 2012, please make sure you have applied fixes given in below.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2455009 (FIX: Slow performance when you recover a database if there are many VLFs inside the transaction log in SQL Server 2005, in SQL Server 2008 or in SQL Server 2008 R2)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2524743 (FIX: Recovery takes longer than expected for a database in a SQL Server 2008 or in a SQL Server 2008 R2 environment)

The fixes would help in speeding up the phases of recovery.