Yesterday evening someone of the INETA User Group Franken (Germany) asked me how to change the MSDE Security and Authentication. I will describe in some short words how to do this:

- During installation you can add the argument SECURITYMODE=SQL. This will install a new MSDE instance with NT and SQL Security.

- If you have already installed a MSDE instance you have to stop the MSDE service using NET STOP MSSQLSERVER and NET STOP SQLSERVERAgent. After this use regedit.exe to change the LoginMode in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSSqlserver\MSSqlServer\LoginMode to the value 2. Now, you can start the two services and login as SA user.

- To change the password for the SA user use OSQL -E and the command sp_password @loginame='sa', @old=null, @new='password'. You have to be a local administrator to change the password for the SA user, but I think if you did not specify a password for the SA user you can connect to the database with OSQL -U sa without asking for a password.

For more details see Microsoft Knowledge Base http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;325022

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