You'll need to remove the Company database before the related System database.  Note that this step just 'disconnects' Sage from the database and doesn't do anything to the database files with SQL Server.

thanks...   so is there a way to do this that purges the database files too?  Have several liquidated companies that are past required records retention period so want to clear them out completely.  Don't want them taking up disk space.

You'll use a tool to send commands to your SQL database such as the SQL Server Management Studio.  Then you can issue DROP DATABASE commands to the database server and that will finish the job.

OK I'll give it a shot;  a little scary using "DROP DATABASE" in a live system with about 25 active companies;  am surprised they don't have a safer GUI utility for doing this.

SQL Server Management Studio is a safe GUI to use.  Locate your database, right-click and select the action you need.

thanks.   mission accomplished.  I think your view of "safe GUI" is maybe a bit different than mine!  In my case I have a lot of similarly named databases.  They're all just 6 characters long and 18 of them have 5 out of 6 matching characters, so it would be really easy to delete, say, ACMPDA when I really meant to delete ACMBDA.  So doing this directly on the database is a whole lot more stressful than it would be with a SAGE GUI frontend that allowed me to select the company by it's full name, and then before deleting it asked me one more time, "Are you sure you want to delete 'Sample Company'?"    Just my view.