With the purchase of a new system to support development with C# 4.0 (dual core, 4 gig ram) I'm back to reinstalling all software; something I do alot living on the bleeding edge...

My HP TouchSmart (IQ504) came with some pretty cool software but it was a Home Premium edition of Vista so I had to scrap it to for Vista Ultimate.

Lesson learned -> make sure you have a network driver before wiping out your system!   I installed Vista ultimate 32 bit only to learn after installing the operating system that HP doesn't have a 32 bit version of the LAN drivers.  Had to start over this time going 64bit and using my USB drive to transfer over the necessary drivers to get the system up and running.  Everything is humming now after downloading and installing applicable drivers but the cool software doesn't work :O

So I'm sticking with Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008.   When I had to do maintenance on one of my web sites I setup my connection and was dismayed to get the following error:

I'm unable to access my ISP's provided database using the SQL Server Management Studio 2008!   Fortunately I have my 32bit Vista development box (which I'm keeping for development situations where 64bit is not supported) and used SQL Server Management Studio 2005 to access it as I always have.

I don't know if SQL 2005/2008 can co-exist and I'm not going to attempt to find out - just be forewarned if you have an ISP provider that you may not have the security with SQL Server 2008 to access your existing databases!

UPDATED 2008.12.07 - SQL Server 2008 issue resolved

As usual CrystalTech (my ISP) did not waste anytime addressing and resolving the issue for me - the only thing I would add is that after step 1. You have to double click the Database folder in the Object Explorer Details Window (which reveals the additional column headers) before you'll have the ability to deselect the "Collation" column as indicated below.   CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO CLIP DEMO 

Hello,

   I have found this information on the MSDN website reguarding this issue.

"It seams that SQL Server 2008 RC0 tools has some issues with SQL Authentication. When one of our customers connected to one of our 2005 servers and tried expanding their database node they would receive the following error: The server principal 'A' is not able to access the database 'B' under the current security context (Microsoft SQL Server, Error:916)

1. Within SQL Server Management Studio, view Object Explorer Details window by selecting View, Object Explorer Details in menu (or hitting F7)

2. Right-click on the column header and unselect 'Collation.'

3. Refresh the server in Object Explorer and enumerate the databases

The server principal 'A' is not able to access the database 'B' under the current security context (Microsoft SQL Server, Error:916)

If you have any questions or require additional assistance, please do not hesitate to contact our support team anytime at support@crystaltech.com or 1-877-323-4678, option 4.

Thank You,

Georges S.
Technical Support Team
CrystalTech Web Hosting, Inc.
A Newtek Business Services Company
Toll Free: 1-877-323-4678
Phone: 602-263-0300 Opt. #4
Fax: 602-263-0600
URL: http//www.crystaltech.com