My SQL Server Express database went from 12MB to 243MB in one day.  I didn't do anything more than edit a few tables/Stored Procs.  Now, I can't access the database from VS 2005 or SQL Server Management Studio.  They both say the database is locked by another process.  I assume it's the aspnet_wp.exe process, which is running, but I can't kill this process.  I tried "End Process" in Windows Task Manager.  It goes down to 2.4MB, but won't die.  Then a little while later, it will be back to 77MB.  I tried rebooting but it won't go away.

Interesting, I can run my dnn site from the browser and it works fine. I can even add records to the database.

What happened?  How do I recover?  How do I stop it from happening again?

Thank you.

Mark

Thanks Orenlevy

The statistics were on, as this is the default. 

I shrunk the database but it only went down to 240 MB.  My last backup of just under 2 days ago was 12MB.  Could it really generate 228 MB of statistics in 2 days?  If so, how do I remove them?

Actually, I tried shrinking it both ways.  I had a backup DB that was only 2 days old.  I had to stop IIS to remove the corrupt DB and replace it with the copy.  Then everything worked.  Without changing any of the settings, I went back into the database and made all the same changes that seemed to corrupt the first file, but it stayed at 12MB, so it wasn't the DB changes that caused the massive size increase. 

I wish I had time to figure out what happened, but I really don't.  So I'll just move along and backup a little more often.

Thanks for your help.