We have an older machine that hosts a bunch of test databases. It was working fine for years. One day a few months ago, we could no longer open SQL Admin on that machine. When you tried, you get the dreaded:
A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server)
Note that we are running everything on this one machine. We are not trying to connect over the network from another machine. I tried variations on MS's page and on various SO threads on the topic:
- the firewall is off
- the server is running, as is the name service
- it is configured for remote connections
- we've rebooted it
Again, this was all working fine, and we changed nothing on that machine. I suppose a Win update may have occurred.
On a lark, today I tried making a new DSN to the same server, using SQL Client 11. It saw the server in the combo (took a while), and the test connection worked fine. But SQLSM still fails!
Does anyone know what connection type the Native Client would use, and what that driver uses to populate the server list?
My suspicion is that something is wrong with the named pipes service. If ODBC uses named pipes, then I'm a bit stumped.
