Don't forget this when installing MSDE 2000 if you need network connectivity

I've just come back from installing one of our systems at a customers office. I don't normally install these systems myself, normally their own IT stall do this. Nice to get out of the office though.

I needed to install MSDE 2000, this should have been simple enough. All appeared to go well, MSDE installed, set up the new application and installed the client locally on the machine to check functionality. All good so far. I then went to install the client on another machine and couldn't get it to connect to SQL server. I spent ages trying different connection strings and messing about with firewalls with no luck.

Then I remembered..

At some point Microsoft decided to disable network connections by default on MSDE installations, I'm sure they had their reasons. This can be overridden by specifying DISABLENETWORKPROTOCOLS=0 as one of the setup parameters. I'd totally forgotten about this, so I un-installed and reinstalled SQL Server and everything worked fine.

Rory dealing with corporate BS

Reading Rory's excellent blog. Rory finds that sitting at home being bored living on his savings isn't enough. He finds he needs to earn some serious money and starts doing the job hunting thing, but gets really annoyed at the BS corporates produce. The brilliantly titled post says it all.
Go read Are You Passionate About Utilizing Your Core Competencies To Effect Strategic Outcomes?

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