My life. I installed MSSQL 2008 Evaluation for testing of a new product. Great. But after 180 days it expired.
I was told I could upgrade it to MSSQL 2012 Express (like a community free DB) – but this wouldn’t work as I didn’t have 2008 R2 SP2 installed, and I couldn’t install that as Windows told me there was nothing to install.
So, I uninstalled 2008 and installed a fresh MSSQL Express.
Either I had blocked it out, or 2012 comes with fresh problems.
By default, the following road blocks are in place:
- Windows Firewall blocks port 1433
- Server authentication is set to only allow Windows Authentication only.
- TCP/IP connections are switched off.
So, to fix all these, you need to
- Add an exception to Windows Firewall, or just the damned thing off.
- Right click the server in MSSMS, choose properties, and then security and select ‘SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode’
- Go into the Server Configuration manager and choose ‘Network Configuration’ and double click ‘Protocols for SQLEXPRESS’ and in there you’ll find a load of options for connections. Check to make sure TCP/IP is enabled. And in the IP addresses section. make sure you have the correct options…
And then, if this isn’t tough enough for you to tackle, try using it on Windows 2012 Server! Hah, what a load of tosh and an extremely frustrating morning…