Data Connection

So after a few hours of banging my head against my computer, here I am. :)

Backstory: A few weeks ago I installed web matrix and MSDE Rel A so I could create some .NET pages from my local machine, connect to a remote SQL Server 2000 database, and then post the .NET pages on the web server. All went well, I could connect to the datasource it brought up the table column names, everything was perfectly working (should've been my first hint to leave well enough alone). Well today, I think, "hey you know I want to give this new Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition a try". So I install it. I thought that if web matrix was that simple to connect, create and post "surely" VSE would be too, but with more features. I also read how I should go ahead and install SQL Server express and SQL Server Managment Studio Express, so I did.

So I go to create a datasource in VSE, but VSE had other plans. An error message popped up. Something to the effect, "An error has occured while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be cuased by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections..." I noticed that it said something about SQL Server 2005 so I figured I'd need to change that so I used the Microsoft SQL Server (OLE DB). It returned the error "[DBNETLIB][ConnectionOpen(Connect()).]SQL Server does not exist or access denied". I flipped back over to web matrix and now it doesn't work either. I have tried referencing the server by servername\db_name and ip address as well. All result in the same.

Any thoughts on how to get me going?

Try .\SQLEXPRESS