MS SQL Installation Gotchas

When you install the developer edition of MS SQL, TCP is not enabled by default. You can't connect on port 1433 until you turn it on.

Enabling TCP

Open SQL Server Configuration Manager:

1. SQL Server Network Configuration
2. Protocols for <instance> → TCP/IP → Enable
3. Restart the service, then connect on 1433.

This trips people up because the instance starts fine locally (named pipes work) but every network client fails with a connect timeout.

See also

• Serverless relational databases — the alternative when you don't want to babysit an instance
• Blog post: MS SQL installation