Getting SQL Express running on XP

I’ve had Sql Server Express installed on my machine since I installed VS2005 about six months ago, but I’ve never actually been able to get it running. Today I actually managed to get it working on my machine.

My problem was I was getting error messages whenever I tried to connect to it. The first error I got when trying to access a SqlExpress database file was:

“Service did not start due to logon failure”.

I googled the error message and found the solution in this blog post.

The solution was to go to the SqlExpress configuration and make sure that the login details for the SqlExpress service were valid. This is how I did it on my computer (slightly different from the blog entry):

1. Open the services admin tool (Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services)

2. Right click on the SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS) service and choose Properties

3. Go to the Log On tab

4. Make sure the username and password that it’s using is valid

The second error I got was:

“Failed to open a connection to the database”

“An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server)”

I wasn’t really sure how to enable SqlExpress for remote connections, but I found another blog entry with some really great instructions.

The solution this time was to open the Sql Server Configuration Manager that’s installed with SqlExpress, enable the “named pipes” protocol and then enable access through your network card.