Question

I’m running SQL Server 2008 Express on a windows 2012… or at least I’m trying to 🙂

My problem is that I have opened the ports I thought I needed but still I cant manage to connect to the database from Visual Studio. As proof I have a screenshot of my firewall settings:

Everything works fine if I turn the firewall off, but who wants that while connected to the internet?

So I wonder what the heck is wrong? Is that some arbitrary ports that gets blocked? Is that a feature on the server (maybe its the same for 2008?)

Large image: http://bildr.no/view/1280743

Answer 1

SQL Server Express typically installs as a named instance, which by default uses a dynamic port. In most cases, it will use 1433 (but not always). You may want to step through:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177440(v=sql.100).aspx

and see if you can assign the service to a fixed port.