I've recently become the proud owner of an old server that my mother doesn't require anymore. It's nothing too fancy at all, just a Xeon 2.4 with 512mb. But its good fun none the less! :-)

Currently I've got it set up with Win2K3 with SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition for my developments and testing. Also, I've moved my SVN server onto it, and my previous post about setting up SVN server on XP came in really handy.

This is all good because it's taking a bit of the load off my XP box which is getting a little bit long in the tooth itself! But it's actually creating a few headaches too...

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to create the SQL 2000 server as a named instance (with no default instance either)... which is, apparently, not such a good idea.

You see, I can't create a remote connection to it... which has numerous repercussions. The main pain in the behind, is that I can't run a web app on my local iis and talk to the database. Which in turn means I can't use VS's debugging for any of my aps that use the sql server. I've only got VS 2005 standard editionat home which means no remote debugging. :-(

This is the error that is currently fueling my frustation:

provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified

This is a real massive pain when I'm trying to learn Castle (the trunk version) in all its wonderful glory. *sigh*

Hopefully a SQL server reinstall should do the trick... or am I missing something here? I mean, I've tried every single help article on the net and nothing seems to work. This post looked promising at first but ended up being another hit and miss.

It's probably just a limitation of SQL Server Developer Edition... Hmmmm, back to google I guess.

[EDIT] SP4 fixed my problem!