Backed-up my sitefinity database from production, with the aim of replacing my development database.
I followed the KB Article on how to migrate the database which worked perfectly fine.
However, when I start/debug Sitefinity from Visual Studio, now it's starting to create new databases and appears to be starting a brand new sitefinity instance.
I am positive that I backed up and restored the correct .bak file, I have the exact same code base as production on my local machine.
But yeah once I hit that debug/green arrow button, it just starts trying to start again.
Not sure why sitefinity thinks it's a new site. Any clues?
On your dev machine please ensure your DataConfig connection string is correct and pointing to your local DB. It is also possible that in production the user account is not running as DBO, so check the database to see what the table names are before your run the Sitefinity site. The connection string may also be in the web.config.
Have a look at this article, look at the SQL script that changes the namespace from DBO to somehting else you would do the opposite on your local dev
www.progress.com/.../how_to_deploy_sitefinity_4_to_shared_hosting