Can't connect to new instance of SQL Server I was trying to upgrade to SQL Server 2014 from SQL Server 2012, but I kept getting a failure on one of the pre-installation checks saying that I needed to have SP1 or later installed for SQL Server 2005. Not sure why it was asking this as I'm pretty sure I never had 2005 installed. I went ahead and found the latest SP for 2005 and installed it but still I was getting the same failure on the pre-install check.

So I decided to install a new instance of 2014 along with cumulative update #5. I named the new instance 'MSSQLSERVER14' to tell it apart from the 'MSSQLSERVER' instance that was already installed for SQL Server 2012. So in my Services I basically have two instances of each service of Sql Server. One for 2012 and one for 2014. I disabled all the 2012 services so only the 2014 are running. However, when I try to connect through Sql server management studio it tells me it cannot connect because of a network-related or instance-specific error.

I've been using Sql Server 2012 with Management Studio for that last couple of years with no problems, so I'm 100% this is caused by the switching to 2014. Anyone know how I can solve this issue?
You have installed a new instance of SQL Server, so you need to change the way you connect to that new instance.

Previously, you had a default instance, so connecting using any of these in the Server name: box would work fine:

localhost
.
127.0.0.1
&lt;any_local_IP&gt;
&lt;your_machine_name&gt;
&lt;your_FQDN&gt;


Now that you have installed a new instance of SQL Server, you need to reference that instance name as part of the connection string, so any of the above need to become the following:

localhost\MSSQLSERVER14
.\MSSQLSERVER14
127.0.0.1\MSSQLSERVER14
&lt;any_local_IP&gt;\MSSQLSERVER14
&lt;your_machine_name&gt;\MSSQLSERVER14
&lt;your_FQDN&gt;\MSSQLSERVER14