SQL Server Upgrade Advisor Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.
One of the client referred about the error during the execution of Upgrade Advisor:
Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.
Initial thoughts lead to checking the SQL Server timeout setting which has been left with default value 0, also further information of this message given the string : FTNONPERSISTEDCOMPCOL. So the books online and other web resource search lead to root cause could be upgrade and replication issues. So going further with the configuration revealed that Windows 2003 SP2 Enterprise Edition, SQL 2000 SP4 Standard Edition server to SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2. THe user database is around 150 gb in size with usual database options set, also one of the database has been involved with Replication (merge).
None of them has been revealed a solution or lead to go forward, then I found that Upgrade Advisor internal configuration of timeout value is 30 seconds and any longer than that value will lead to timeout error. Refer to the Using Upgrade Advisor to Prepare for Upgrades and I have used Profiler during this tool was running and identified that the queries running at this time are not upgrade-threating and they can be executed without any issues using Query Analyzer or Query Editor. So this is not a show-stopper for the upgrade process and further information on Replication can be found from the links http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms146934.aspx & http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143470.aspx and you must stop the replication while upgrade process is setup.
