Error Messages

Ok this is going to be a little bit of a rant, and I may mention Microsoft a few times. Error messages and their content are important. If they dont provide a course of action then they are essentially lists of keywords to stuff into google.

Recently I was forced to have to mess around with SQL Server. Running on an image that was given to me my someone else. So far so messy. I couldn't not get the Management Studio to connect. Kept geting a message about pipes, you look at the detail you get a stack trace. Essentially some comms stuff somewhere has spat its dummy. Great helpful, thanks.

Poking about ensued, all of the usual suspects, checking services etc.

The VM was unreliable anyway so I thought sod it I'll reinstall the whole damn things, go from clean. During the install of SWL Server there is a big fat button saying as this user to access the database, seems a sensible thing to do. So totally default install. Management studio same error, cant even see that the DB exists.

Removed the DB.

Second install, thought what the hell I'll add the Administrator Group, I'm one of them, that will work.

Problem solved.

At no point did any of the messages that I got indicate that permissions were the issue, and the big fat button on the installer encouraged me to do the wrong damn thing. Err FAIL.

I'm guessing the network later just said "no", instead of saying "no you don't have permissions"