Applies To
	Product(s):	SELECTserver
	Version(s):	N\A
	Environment:	N\A
	Area:	Administration
	Subarea:	N\A
	Original Author:	James White, Bentley Technical Support Group

Problem

The following message is in the Event Viewer:

CREATE DATABASE or ALTER DATABASE failed because the resulting cumulative database size would exceed your licensed limit of 4096 MB per database.

Solution

There is a 4GB size limitation on SQL server express and 2 GB on MSDE. If you've hit this then you'll have the following options:
1) Move the database to a SQL server vs SQL Express where this is not limitation.
2) Create a new DB, but you will not have access to the older records.

Note that you will also get this error if the drive where the .mdf and .ldf or any other filegroup is full.

If you're not using SQL Express or MSDE then check the autogrow and autoshrink options of your database. Their database may need to be tuned and maintenance performed on it.

See Also

Please refer the following links for more information:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/315512/EN-US/

For more information about how to grow and shrink your database and log
files, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 256650 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256650/)

How to shrink the SQL Server 7.0 transaction log 272318 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272318/)  

Shrinking the transaction log in SQL Server 2000 with DBCC SHRINKFILE 317375 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317375/)

 A transaction log grows unexpectedly or becomes full on a computer that is running SQL Server 247751 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/247751/)

BUG: Database maintenance plan does not shrink the database 305635 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305635/)

A timeout occurs when a database is automatically expanding
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqldataaccess/thread/00976ed7-e5d2-4001-a527-bb3fd356ee62