가슴이 뛴다

jump to the solution

I spent a good number of hours the last couple days banging on a C# app trying to figure why I kept getting an “Access is denied” error when the application tried to attach to a local MDF file (SQL Server Express 2005). A Google search turned up numerous theories and “solution”. Based on the variety of solutions I’d venture to guess Microsoft, with its wonderful Vista, created several ways to arrive at this error.

For my case the solution was quite simple once I figured how to do it. First, I knew my app needed to run with elevated permissions, but even if I right clicked and selected “Run as administrator” the problem persisted. I read about creating SQL user accounts, and granting permissions, blah, blah, blah. None of those changes made a lick of different.

After much poking around the problem turned out to be the way the SQL Server service was configured. It was setup to run as a “Network Service” instead of the “Local System” account.

So here is the fix:

• Open ‘Services’ (type ’services’ in Start Search on Vista)
• Find SQL Server, right click, and select Properties
• Under the ‘Log On’ tab select Log on as ‘Local System account’

That’s it. Run as administrator and everything works perfect.