Unable to connect to SQL Server Express from a remote machine.

If unable to connect to SQL Server standard or Express edition (using 2008) from another machine using SQL management studios try the step in this Blog post  (from a previous post) and if that still does not resolve the issue, like in my case today, them it is the firewall. Make sure you open UDP port 1434 on the server machine. That took care of the connection problem in my case. This page from Microsoft’s support site gives more details on what else to look for –> Microsoft SQL Support.

The above helped resolved the following connection errors.

NOTE: Connecting to a default instance of SQL Server (not the Express Edition) does not required the instance name, only the server name like so.

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