restart SQL 2008 x64 Standard Server every 24 hrs in windows server 2008

Make sure you configure the following set of things:

* AWE, Min and Max Server Memory.
* If you have several instances in your machine, make sure that there is some room for Physical Memory size after allocating the memory for both instances.

Kindly let me know the no. of instances and Physical Memory available in your system so that we can configure better values for that..

I think you're better off troubleshooting your errors (not sure that I can help on that).

As for the restart part, create a batch file with the commands

NET STOP MSSQLServer
NET START MSSQLServer

and schedule the batch file to run in task scheduler.

Note: the MSSQLServer is what the service name was in SQL 2000.  It MAY be different in SQL 2008/5.  Go to the Services admin tool and locate the SQL server service.  Open it and look at the service name in the top part of the dialog that appears.  Substitute MSSQLServer for that service name.

Here is a hotfix that helped with my problem.

http://www.mskbarticles.com/index.php?kb=974609

My advice is that don't mess up with SQL Server memory mangement. It does eat up all the memory, YES, but SQL Server is equipped with very sophisticated and clever memory management modules that always ensure all the available memeory is used optimally to run the server. If this server is only a DB server and doesn't have any other role, you shouldn't worry at all about SQL Server not returning the memory to OS. This is perfectly normal and your worry is unnecessary.
If on the other hand this is a multi-purpose server, then either separate the roles (SQL Server is not a good cohabitant with any other app/service) or give it it's fare share of RAM and leave it on its own. A healthy DB Server doen't need to be restarted regualrly; in fact doing so can cause a lot of troubles.

OK,
AWE is turned off (everything is 64bit, so I presume it is not necessary?)

The Maximum memory is set to 4GB (the DB is about 400MB - it's the only one on there - a web DB)

The only other app is IIS7 - running the website (which can consume ~700MB of memory max due to extensive caching - not an issue).

There are 8GB total physical memory.  When SQL Server is restarted, the entire system memory is around 1.4GB (including the cache for the website).  After about 3 days, the system is reporting 7.9GB in use, and runs in slow motion (paging).
Restarting SQL Server 2008, resets the memory.
I have no issue with buying more RAM (can hold 256GB of RAM on this system), but I fear the "creep" will simply have the same effect.

The site was Xferred from a 1.6Ghz opteron dual core machine w/W2K3x64 and SQL2005x64 (standard) and run fine w/4GB ram. No creep, no leaks, (ran as fast as this 8-Core Opteron 2.8Ghz box - go figure - not impressed w/SuperMicro).
If there is a "query" issue, why would SQL2K5 handle the "bugs" and not the more advanced SQL2008?
There are no errors being reported in taskmgr - and I can't find any errors from SQLServer either.

Ok, assuming that you've got all the latest service packs, update patches, etc. which you should, it sounds like a serious page-fault issue. I’d check the “pagefile.sys” and make sure it’s the right size – usually 1-1.5 times the physical memory. I’d recommend setting it to manual size to stop the system from growing the pagefile too large too quickly. Ideally you’d want to move it to a separate disk, if possible at all.

Check this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654  to find out more about how you can determine the optimal size for your server.

Pagefile is set to 12GB (the "recommended" setting) -
I created another one on another harddrive as well (I'll have to reboot the server at 5am, so it will be sometime before I see any results).  

I wish I had granular control of the way SQL Server handles memory (or force it to act like SQL2005 - that worked fine, no memory hogging, no system-wide slowdowns).  This is a VERY common complaint for SQL2008 (as per Google)

Did you take a look at the hotfix?

>> This is a VERY common complaint for SQL2008 (as per Google)

Make sure that you have applied SP1 for SQL Server 2008 and SP2 for your Windows Server 2008 too..
If that didn't helped, then try applying Hotfix mentioned by dariusq

I'll have to get to the hotfix again (I spaced it yesterday - need to do this at 5am so I can reboot the server w/o messing up the site)

sure.. Check it out and revert so that we can try accordingly.

ok, put in the hotfix.  Still, the memory grows.  

oops! thought SP1 for SQL2008 was installed - it was not.  Will give that a try.

no - it was installed after all.  Oh well. Restarting seems to be the only way to go.

Use perfmon and try to monitor your server performance completely so that you can identify any resource related issues or not..

hi rrjegan17,  Is there a particular thing I should be monitoring specific to SQL 2008?  

Yes, monitor counters specific to Memory, CPU, Network, SQL General statistics SQL Memory for nearly 3 days or your complete cycle required for restarting your Server and outputs captured might help us nail down the issue..

Might seem obvious, but I think it's worth mentioning that since SQL Server Agent relies on SQL Server Service, you should either schedule the above mentioned cmd via another instance of SQL Server on your network or more straightforwardly using Windows scheduler.  

PerfMon is a great tool, but useless in diagnosing SQL2008 - it's a buggy database, period!

sc \\SRV1 stop "SQLAgent$SQL2008"
 - see if it stopped, if so continue
sc \\SRV1 stop "MSSQL$SQL2008"
 - see if it stopped, if so continue
sc \\SRV1 start "MSSQL$SQL2008"
 - see if it started, if so continue
sc \\SRV1 start "SQLAgent$SQL2008"
 - see if started (within  a period of time), if not try again 3 x, then send an email alert

now just need to figure out how to get the batch file to check the service status before executing the next line -
ugh! maybe this would be easier in a program than a batch file (batch is, so, 80's)

SC query will display if a service is running, e.g.:
sc \\SRV1 query "SQLAgent$SQL2008"
You can run it as above once, just to see what the output looks like. However in order to use it in a batch file, it'd be more efficient to pipe into FIND or FindStr filter e.g.
  C:\> SC \\SRV1 query "SQLAgent$SQL2008" | FIND "STATE" | FIND "STOPPED"
Or
  C:\> SC \\SRV1 query "SQLAgent$SQL2008" | FIND "STATE" | FIND "RUNNING"
The statements above will return an %ERRORLEVEL% = 1 if the text is not found, i.e.:
IF errorlevel 1 GOTO :my_subroutine

Please note the Find filter is case sensitive and also b aware if extra spaces.