SQL Server Express 2005 cannot accept connection (but ODBC working from external and local server)

Question

I'm having a problem with SQL Server Express 2005 edition; it's unable to be contacted from an application (3rd party monitoring utility software).

I have perform the following tests, all of which succeeded:

1. Ping and DNS resolve test from internal and external (my laptop).
2. Creating System ODBC entry and then perform test from the server RDP connection and also remotely from my laptop.
3. Open up SQL Server management studio and look at the status of the database, are all fine with the total disk usage is under 4 GB.

The following is the error that I can capture:

--------------------------- Microsoft SQL Server Login --------------------------- Connection failed: SQLState: '01000' SQL Server Error: 67 [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][DBNETLIB]ConnectionOpen (Connect()). Connection failed: SQLState: '08001' SQL Server Error: 17 [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][DBNETLIB]SQL Server does not exist or access denied. --------------------------- OK --------------------------- 

Any help and suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

OK, so the problem was that the server where the SQL Server is running, all in a sudden was removed from the DNS. :-/

Not sure why, the server can ping to the rest of the data center, but the rest of the data center cannot ping or access this server.

Rebooting the server resolved this issue.