I was assisting some friends with a database issue. For the life of us, we could not get the database registered.
I eventually went down the path of, “How was the authentication set up?” This was the right question, but the answer was not readily found. We really did not want to uninstall and re-install the database, so one of us searched MSDN and found that the authetication mode is stored in the registry.
The registry path: \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQLServer\
The registry key: LoginMode – REG_DWORD – 0×00000001
I found that you need REG_DWORD to be 0×00000002 for mixed mode authentication.
You can change the value of the REG_DWORD by double-clicking the registry key(LoginMode) and replacing the value from 1 to 2.
Note: Make sure the radio button is still on hexadecimal
After the DWORD was changed, the database authenticated and all was right in the world.
This was a default installation so if you created an instance name, your registry path will differ only slightly towards the end of the path.
