I cannot connect to ssms

Question

When I open microsoft sql server a server name doesn’t show up automatically on my laptop and when I input the desktop name I get an ERROR saying ……..

Additional information:
A network -related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server.
The cerver was not found or was not acceecible. Verify that the inerance name ie correct and thar
SOL Server is configured to allow remote connectons. provider: SOL Network Intertaces, error: 20 -
Error Locating Server /Instance Specified) (Microsoft SQL Server)

Answer 1

Hi @solomon olusanya ,

How did you connect to your SQL server instance? Using SSMS or others? Please follow below steps to troubleshot SQL server connection issue.

1. Make sure SQL Server Service is running
2. If a named instance, make sure SQL Server browser service is running. Make sure the instance name is spelled correct and there is actually such an instance on your target machine.
3. Make sure SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections
4. Examine the SQL Server error log for messages confirming that SQL is listening on the expected network interfaces and ports
5. Test server connectivity with PING from the client machine
6. Test port connectivity using TELNET to the server and port (from step 4) from the client machine. For example
   TELNET <server-name> 1433
7. Check firewall settings if step 5 or 6 connectivity test fails

If you have some confuse about the steps, please refer to Resolving could not open a connection to SQL Server errors or Troubleshoot connecting to the SQL Server Database Engine to get more information.

If you have some confuse about using SSMS connecting to SQL server. Please refer to MS document Lesson 1: Connecting to the Database Engine to get detail steps.

Use SSMS connect to SQL server.

Choose the SQL server instance that you want to connect.

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Answer 2

Let's first get some name straight. You don't open Microsoft SQL Server; SQL Server runs as a service and has no UI.

And you don't connect to SSMS. SSMS, SQL Server Management Studio, is a program you can use to connect to SQL Server to run queries.

It is unclear from your post, why you expect connection to work. What steps have you taken to troubleshoot the issue?

Note that installing SSMS is not enough. As I said ,SSMS is a program that you can use to run queries on SQL Server. But SQL Server is a separate install. With SSMS on its own, you cannot do much.

If you installed SQL Express, use .\SQLEXPRESS to connect.