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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-13T19:31:09+00:00

Locally, when I open SQL Server Management Studio 2012 I connect to my databases

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Locally, when I open SQL Server Management Studio 2012 I connect to my databases by server name of {MyPCName}.

Now and then, always changing after a machine shutdown, this fails. If I change the server name to {MyPCName}/SQLExpress.

It looks as though I have two versions of SQL Server installed. 2010, and 2011.

Looking at the program logs, yesterday for example, when I could logon using {MyPCName} the SQL Server logs seem to have been updating the logs in the folder MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER. Today the logs seem to be updating the logs in the folder MSSQL10.SQLEXPRESS.

Looking in my installed programs list I appear to have SQL Server 2008 and 2012 installed.

Is there a way to, either, be able to select which you connect to / remove version 2010?

These are all Express versions by the way in case it makes any difference. 😉

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  1. Editorial Team

    Actually, you are not running two express versions, unless you ended up renaming one instance during installation. The SQL11 (SQ Server 2012) installation has a default name of MSSQLSERVER. Express edition typically names itself SQLEXPRESS, as you saw in the 2008 version.

    This also explains why you can connect using nothing more than the local host name. If you want to connect to a non-default named instance, you have to add the instance name (I.e. localhost\SQLEXPRESS).

    Using SQL Server Setup, you can uninstall one of the versions completely.

    Prior to doing so, make sure you take a backup of your system databases (master, model, and msdb) in case you end up needing anything in them. I’d also advise you to detach whatever user databases you still need from the old instance, and then attaching them to the new instance.

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