SQL Server Error 2533 and Recovery

Database pages are the basic Input/Output unit of SQL Server. All these pages are marked with an individual 96-byte header. These headers store page metadata such as page type, page number, free space available on page and object/index ID. If SQL Server finds incorrect information in these page headers, it declares them corrupted and fails to access information from them. As a result, the corresponding tables get corrupted. Therefore, to restore the lost information, you need to use your recent data backup. At times, database backup is not available or exists in invalid state. In such situations, you should use advanced SQL recovery tools.

You might encounter the below error displaying in SQL Server error log:

Server: Msg 2533, Level 16, State 1
Table error: Page P_ID allocated to object ID O_ID, index ID I_ID was not seen. Page may be invalid or have incorrect object ID information in its header.

Cause

Error 2533 generates when the page is allocated, but SQL Server doesn’t find the expected object/index ID in page header. The page header shows invalid index ID, which indicates the page corruption in database. Such kinds of errors generally arise due to hardware malfunction.

Solution

To troubleshoot error 2533 in SQL Server, you should follow these methods:

You need to detect and correct hardware issues using hardware diagnostics. You can also check system, application and SQL Server™ log for this purpose.
If a clean database backup is available, you can use it to restore required information.
When no clean backup is available, you should run DBCC CHECKDB command without using any repair clause. It will allow you to determine the extent of database corruption and suggest the repair clause. Run DBCC CHECKDB command with the suggested repair clause. But, the process can cause data loss as will delete the corrupted pages.
If problem persists, use commercial SQL Repair tools. These are advanced and safe SQL Recovery applications designed to analyze and repair a damaged SQL Server database in all cases of logical corruption. Such tools embed powerful recovery options and provide graphically rich user interface.

Stellar Phoenix SQL Recovery is a comprehensive repair tool for damaged SQL Server databases. It supports safe database repair for SQL Server 2008, 2005 and 2000. This SQL Repair software provides self-descriptive interface and can restore all database objects including tables, user defined data types and functions, triggers, stored procedures etc.