I am having an issue at work that is driving me mad. I am new to SQL, and am finding my legs as a system administrator (trial by fire). We have a production server that runs a SQL database and I am trying to mimic the production server in a stand-alone (test) environment. My stand-alone server is of the exact hardware and I have ghosted the production server drives on to the test server (stand-alone) as well. Everything is identical. The only difference is my test server is not in a domain. Its only in a workgroup. My setup consists of one client machine (Windows 7) and the test server running Server 2008r2(SP2)+ SQL Server 2008r2.
We have applications that connect to the database and when I run the applications (connect to the database?), I get the following error.
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) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 5)
I have been researching this error for about 3 months now. I am at my wits end. I have tried all the solutions I could find. Most of the solutions I found here at this site. Enable remote connections-DONE, Firewall execptions-not necessary as I can disable the firewall since I'm on a standalone network, but I have been down that road before and it did not help. I don't think this is a network issue as I am using just a switch with the server and one client connected. I can ping back and forth between the systems.
I've tried so many other solutions that I cant even remember them all. Changed so many settings I've lost count. Thank goodness I can re-image the server back to normal if I feel I've gone to far and changed too many settings to where I can't remember what I've done.
As you can tell, I probably only make things worse the more I try to fix the error, but I have no choice. Everyone is looking at me to fix this and get the test server working, but I need some help. A huge thank you in advance to anyone that can help me solve this. It would be greatly appreciated!
