Cannot connect to SQL Server Management Studio

Question

tearing my hair out to be honest at this stage.

I have an installation of SQL Server 2008 express on my laptop. I\'ve been trying to login to SQL Server Management

Answer 1

You will also see this error if you prefix the instance name with double blackslashes, eg. attempt to connect to \host\sqlserver instead of host\sqlserver - an easy mistake to make if you're used to typing UNC paths.