This is the first in a series of articles meant to provide practical solutions to common issues. In this post, we’ll talk about one of the most pervasive error messages out there:
A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections.
Followed by either:
(provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 – Error Locating Server/Instance Specified)
or
(provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server)
One thing I’ll say right off the bat: