I installed SQL Express 2008 yesterday for the first time and ran into an interesting “feature”. I was trying to set it up as a default instance, which seems pretty straightforward based on this screenshot:
The only problem is that after the install was complete I had a named instance called SQLEXPRESS. I did the install again, thinking maybe I had missed something, and got the same result. It turns out that the current release of SQL Express simply ignores that “Default instance” checkbox and creates an instance with whatever name was entered in the “Instance ID” field.
Fortunately there’s a workaround: Create a named instance called MSSQLSERVER (also using MSSQLSERVER as the Instance ID):
This issue has been reported as Bug ID 361809 in Connect and Microsoft has indicated that it will be fixed in the next public update which will be released “soon”
About Kendal
Kendal is a database strategist, community advocate, public speaker, and blogger. A practiced IT professional with over 15 years of SQL Server experience, Kendal excels at disaster recovery, high availability planning/implementation, & debugging/troubleshooting mission critical SQL Server environments. Kendal is a Senior Consultant on the Microsoft Premier Developer Support team and President of MagicPASS, the Orlando, FL based chapter of PASS. Before joining Microsoft, Kendal was a SQL Server/Data Platform MVP from 2011-2016.
12 comments
As of today - 25Apr2009 - this issue is not yet fixed. I'm about to do my third install after finding your work-around. Thanks for posting it!
22 May 2009 - the issue is not fixed yet.
Thank you for workaround.
It will be released "soon" which translated means that Microsoft knows about the bug, but could care less and will never fix it.
Thank you. You saved me from hours of madness!
Awesome, I had been going round and round trying to figure this out. It's not a huge deal for me on my dev machine, but my OCD kicks in and it just annoys me to not have a default instance. Thanks a lot for the tip!
Thank you. I used this workaround to solve a bcp issue with SQL EXPRESS 2005 where I was not able to specify the server name in the command line, as the app tried to connect to the default instance, this saved me,
Thanks! I'm planning on using this soon.
Just an FYI; using this workaround with an Advanced Services install will screw up Reporting Services. I tried on two different machines and could get neither reporting services instances to work properly until I uninstalled both the SQL and SSRS instances and reinstalled using the default SQLEXPRESS instance name and ID.
Thx man u did a great job
thanks for info!
Interesting article, added his blog to Favorites
Great job! Thanks!
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