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It should also show it when you go to the General Tab of Server Properties window. &nbsp;Look at the field called Name.
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That just says the Server name with no instance. But i remember typing an instance in somewhere before and it worked.
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Then you are connected to the default instance on that server. &nbsp;If there are any named instances on that server, you can go to the SQL Server Configuration Manager and look in the SQL Server 2005 Services section. &nbsp;If you have any named instances, you will see them listed in parenthesis after the SQL Server service(s).<br />
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For example, if you had 2 instances, one default and one named instance called INST2, you'd see:<br />
<br />
SQL Server<br />
SQL Server (INST2)
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By the way, you must open the configuration manager from the server.
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If the instance name is empty then it is not a named instance. If it was a named instance its name would be SERVER_NAME\INSTANCE_NAME<br />
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Maybe there is another instance running somewhere else.
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Ok thanks. Seems weird i remember entering something ages ago. Whether it might be a generic one. I'll accept the first post as solution as if there was a visable instance name, it would show up there. Thanks once again.
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Hi all,<br />
<br />
I am trying to find out the instance name of our SQL Server. At first glance it doesn't show an instance name. When i go to the server properties and click &quot;view connection properties&quot;, the instance name is blank.<br />
<br />
However i remember with another application i used it required an instance name, I used something and it worked but i can't remember what that something was. Anyone have any ideas?
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Hi all,

I am trying to find out the instance name of our SQL Server. At first glance it doesn't show an instance name. When i go to the server properties and click "view connection properties", the instance name is blank.

However i remember with another application i used it required an instance name, I used something and it worked but i can't remember what that something was. Anyone have any ideas?

Finding the SQL instance name

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is a suite of relational database management system (RDBMS) products providing multi-user database access functionality.Component services include integration (SSIS), reporting (SSRS), analysis (SSAS), data quality, master data, T-SQL and performance tuning. It includes support for managing XML data and allows a database server to be exposed over web services using Tabular Data Stream (TDS) packets encapsulated within SOAP (protocol) requests.