Knowledge Base

SMS: "Couldn't Connect to SQL Server" Error When Reusing Login IDs

Article ID: 190286

Article Last Modified on 6/14/2005

Microsoft Systems Management Server 1.2 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q190286

SYMPTOMS

When attempting to start the Systems Management Server Administrator program you may receive the following error message:

Couldn't connect to SQL Server. The server may be down or configured incorrectly.

This problem is independent of the version of SQL Server being used, and it can occur with all types of SQL Server security: standard, integrated, or mixed.

CAUSE

This error can occur when using a SQL Server login ID that had previously been deleted. The newly re-created login ID is being used to access the SMS database.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, use the Systems Management Server Security Manager to remove permissions to this account and then add them back in.

MORE INFORMATION

When deleting the original SQL Server login ID from the SQL Server, you can avoid this problem of reusing it later by also running the following SQL query to delete the ID from the SMS database, where <SQL_Login> is the SQL Server login ID that you want to remove:

   use SMS
   delete from SecurityObjAccessList where username = '<SQL_login>'

Additional query words: prodsms

Keywords: kbdatabase kbprb kbsmsadmin KB190286