login failed for user (Microsoft SQL Server error: 18456)

So you had some problems with your installation of the SQL Server 2005 installation on your machine and now that you have un-installed and installed it, you can't seem to log on to your own machine using basic windows authentication. You can log into other servers but you just can't seem to log on to localhost. So you search the internet for the error message and after going through a whole lot of issues that are vaguely related, like changing authentication type from windows to sql and so on and so forth, you land on my blog.

The Solution: Install Visual Studio 2005 SP2

This was a bug in SQL Server 2005 that was fixed in SP2.

Published Tuesday, April 08, 2008 4:32 PM by Nilotpal Das

Comments

Thursday, December 25, 2008 3:45 PM by elbasha

# re: login failed for user (Microsoft SQL Server error: 18456)

thank you..

Thursday, January 08, 2009 12:54 AM by Sven

# re: login failed for user (Microsoft SQL Server error: 18456)

Yeah, and why can't i find this damn thing anywhere on the net!?

Friday, March 13, 2009 11:38 PM by Fher

# re: login failed for user (Microsoft SQL Server error: 18456)

Download here: (SP3 Yay!)

www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx

Monday, March 16, 2009 3:09 AM by sarvajeet

# re: login failed for user (Microsoft SQL Server error: 18456)

I installed service pack 3 for SQL 2005 and still getting the same error message.

Please help what can be possible reasons for this?

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 6:15 AM by napster

# re: login failed for user (Microsoft SQL Server error: 18456)

You have to one thing;

go to Management studio/enterprise manager=>rightclick on it go to Properties =>

go to security => Server authentication=> select SQL Server  and windows authentication mode.

That it.

cheers

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