OK, I have installed MSDE. I used a very plain installation:

SETUP SAPWD="MySysAdminPW123"

My computer is part of a larger network but the SQL installation was local and will only be used locally. The "Services" listing under "Administrative Tools" (Windows XP-Pro) says that the service name is MSSQLSERVER. Fine. The little SQL Service Manager window says that the name of my server is JIMS-MOBILE. That is the name of my laptop on the network. I don't know why my SQL Server inherited that name but I don't care. I just want to get this working.

I want to connect to the Northwind database so that I can get on with the 2nd Edition book. Contrary to the claim in this book, installing .NET SDK did NOT install SQL server. It did not even install the Northwind database. I have Northwind because I have MS-Access.

So, I put Northwind.mdb into a directory called "C:\DataSets".

My understanding is that I must first set up a connection to this database file through SQL. Here come the questions:

Should this be a User DSN, System DSN, File DSN? What server name should I use? The drop down box offers 2 choices: "(local)" or "JIMS-MOBILE".

Win NT Authentication or SQL Server Authentication?

etc, etc, etc...

This 2nd edition book makes WAY too many assumptions about what the reader already knows about databases. I have tried every possible permutation of connection source string imaginable and all I get is 15 seconds of hang-time when it reaches the line:

conn.open() // On page 523.

Then I get an exception with unintelligable gibberish.

I just want to get on with this book which I have actually enjoyed up until now but I am getting ready to give up in abject dispare...

Thank you in advance to anybody who tries to help.
Eb

Eberly, did you ever get past this section? Just got here. Need to start figuring this out. .Net SDK 1.1 didnt install this for me, that I can see. Or if it did, need to figure this out.

Back from my bike ride. OK, looks like first step is to download MSDE 2000 Release A from Microsoft website.

After dowloading MSDE2000A.exe, run it which extracts the MSDE 2000 setup files to C:\MSDERelA by default.

from MS website:

open an MS-DOS command prompt and change to the directory where you extracted the files. MSDE extracts to C:\MSDERelA by default. Run the following command to set up MSDE for the .NET Framework SDK QuickStart tutorials. Replace with the systems administrator's password that you would like to use.

Setup.exe /qb+ INSTANCENAME=NetSDK DISABLENETWORKPROTOCOLS=1 SAPWD=<YOUR SA PASSWORD>

Next go back to Microsoft website and search for the Northwind sample database and download it.

Run the install for the sample database which copies everything to a folder

c:\SQL Server 2000 Sample Databases

Problem is now when I try and connect the database to the service it always says the service is not running. Yet when I goto control panel and check it says it is running.

Tried runing the setup for MSDE several times, in different ways using what it said on MS site. Nothing worked.

So then I installed not specifying the INSTANCENAME and just let it use the default instance. This worked.

So tomorrow I am going to delete the other 2 instances I have running and get back to having one instance of MSDE, which is the default instance.

Then I will try and connect the database again. Report back tomorrow

Well so much for tomorrow. gone in a little vacation for a week.

Got the other 2 instances deleted. So only one instance of MSDE running and that is a default instance.

Then I was able to run the tool to connect the sample database to the server. This seemed to work w/o error. Need to do a little more checking. Instructions for connecting an existing DB are in the ReadMe_SQL2000SampleDbScripts.htm file in the folder where the sample database was installed.