SQL Error

One last thing... when the "Connect to Server" dialog appears in Management Studio try:

.\SQLExpress (don't forget the (DOT) > . <)

in the "Server Name" - with Windows Authentication.

It may not be listed in your drop down of available server names - mine wasn't - probably because SQL Server Management Studio was not designed to look for SQL Express instances.

If nothing I've posted works... I'm fresh out of ideas :)

Thanks for your patience with this. I'd already tried what you've suggested, error still remains!

So you reinstalled it and everything?

Yep, I've tried everything you've suggested. I would of liked to have looked at the software as well, but given the technical difficulties in getting it setup, even with MS Web, I think I'll be giving it a miss for now. I can't believe your the one person in this forum who has any idea on how to resolve these issues. Thanks for your help though.

pjbursnall wrote:

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has run into and resolved these issues before, but if people see that someone (like me) is already responding to a question with possible solutions then they may not offer their solutions because they might figure that the solutions already posted may work. I know that I don't respond to a question unless I have a solution that hasn't been tried/offered that I believe will work...

All that I can tell you is that I've used Microsoft's Web Platform Installer before (several times) and it has worked for me. Its not completely straightforward, but with some persistence it can be done.

All you really need to run nopCommerce is a web server that can run asp.net (.net 4.0) and SQL server (full-blown or Express). Microsoft's WPI should be able to take care of all that for you, but it is not impossible to set it up without using that. It just sounds to me like you don't have the SQL server database engine installed, because if you did you would be able to connect to it with SQL Server Management Studio in some sort of way.

One more thing to try:

Start | Run | type Services.msc (Windows 7 just hit start and type services.msc in that search box and hit enter) and look for all entries with "Sql Server (Instance Name)"

You should see "SQL Server(MSSQLSERVER)" for full-blown SQL Server or "SQL Server(SQLEXPRESS)" for SQL Express.

The status for your SQL server (full-blown or Express) should read "Started", if it doesn't then you will NOT be able to connect because the service is not running. It is possible to install SQL Server and have it set to manual start up or even if it is set to automatic start up it may not start for some reason - mine does that from time to time.  

Whatever the reason, you won't be able to connect to it to do anything without the service installed and running. So if it is not there, then you don't have it installed correctly, if it is there and the status is not "started" then you can right click on it and choose "start". If it is there and started and you still can't connect... you have other issues. :)

The fact there are no local sql server to connect to will be the issue! I would have installed this with a host but every package I have runs on Linux. Services look fine....

At a DOS prompt (cmd.exe) you can also type

SQLCMD - L

To see what servers are running...

Remember that the problems your having here aren't down to the nopCommerce software - there's something gone awry during the install and configuration using the WPI.

My initial install was via WPI and it worked fine - since then I've upgraded to Windows7 64bit and downloaded and set up everything manually while I build my site. It can be a bit daunting trying to figure it all out at first but since you are trying to learn all about MS IIS and SQL Server at the same time, that's to be expected. Once it's all figured out and running you'll likely wonder what the fuss was about. :D

Assuming that you can get connected to your server from SQL Management Studio you should be able to use the tree view on the left hand side to create yourself a database user account (inside of Security to Logins - right click and select New Login) and an empty database too if you wish (right click Databases and select New Database). Then you can pass this information to the nopCommerce installation scripts and go from there.

I've ran the DOS command you've mentioned a few times, and no servers are listed. I really can't see what I've done wrong in the SQL install but there's something there I'm not getting right, despite the facts I'm completing it with the default settings. I appreciate the fault is not with nopCommerce, rather the software it's built on. That doesn't excuse the difficulty of what's required to get it running though. I'm sure this would be easier if I asked my host to change one of my packages to Windows, but given nopCommerce is in the minority of shopping carts that are ASP built, I'm reluctant to do that.

It's really not hard to get going mate

Unfortunately you've probably wasted lots of time trying to get something working which is being hobbled by a failed SQL Server install.

I would check out http://www.microsoft.com/express/Database/ and do a download and install of SQL Express directly - from there you should be fine :D