It seems this is a common problem over the internet so let me give you details on my environment and the steps I did:
Client - Windows 7 32-bit with SQL Management Studio Server - Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard with SQL Server 2008 R2 [Default not named instance] and SQL Management Studio For the server I added Application server role. I think I also added Web server role. The server and client are on the same LAN.
After installation and testing windows authentication to the SQL server, this is -in short words- what I did to enable SQL server remote login:
- Enabled and started all SQL Server services.
- Enabled TCP/IP for SQL Server. [I restarted the server to be sure after this step]
- Enabled TCP port access on the firewall.
- Allowed sqlservr.exe and sqlbrowser.exe on the firewall.
- Created another user rather than sa and give it sysadmin role
On the client machine, when I open SQL management studio, I tried to login with server IP address, server name, server name or IP with port [192.168.1.25,1443]. Username and password are correct.
After the previous explanation, I can't access the server's SQL Server remotely, I get the famous error "A network-related or instance specific". Notice that the same error message appear, but with different error codes after performing some steps from the above. I can't provide you with the error codes since I'm not with the machine right now. Any help is really appreciated! Thanks!