Why am I getting Cannot Connect to Server A network related or instance specific error When I experienced this error in Visual Studio, A network related or instance specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. Named Pipes Provider, error 4. Could not open a connection to SQL Server. C code, which was attempting to obtain my SQL Server data to display it in a grid. The break occurred exactly on the line that says connect. Open using var connect Connections. Sql. Connection. SELECT Name, Birthdate, Narrative FROM Friends. Sql. Commandquery, connect. Program Controlled Gridview DatakeynamesOpen. Execute. Reader. Read. It was inexplicable because the SQL query was very simple, I had the right connection string, and the database server was available. I decided to run the actual SQL query manually myself in SQL Management Studio and it ran just fine and yielded several records. But one thing stood out in the query results there was some improperly encoded HTML text inside a varcharmax type field within the Friends table specifically, some encoded comment symbols of the sort lt lodged within the Narrative columns data. The suspect data row looked like this Name Birthdate Narrative. Fred 2. 1 Oct 7. HTML Comment Once upon a time. Notice the encoded HTML symbol lt, which stood for a lt character. Somehow that made its way into the database and my C code could not pick it up It failed everytime right at the connect. Open line After I manually edited that one row of data in the database table Friends and put in the decoded lt character instead, everything workedHeres what that row should have looked like Name Birthdate Narrative. Fred 2. 1 Oct 7. HTML Comment Once upon a time. No more missed important software updates UpdateStar 11 lets you stay up to date and secure with the software on your computer. I get the following error when trying to connect to SQL Server Cannot connect to 108. A networkrelated or instancespecific error occurred while. A while back I built a simple constant current electronic load using an aluminum HDD cooler case as the heatsink. While it was sufficient for a few amps load under. I edited the one bad row I had by using this simple UPDATE statement below. But if you had several offending rows of encoded HTML, you might need a more elaborate UPDATE statement that uses the REPLACE function UPDATE Friends SET Narrative lt HTML Comment Once upon a time. WHERE Narrative LIKE lt. So, the moral of the story is at least in my case, sanitize your HTML content before storing it in the database and you wont get this cryptic SQL Server error in the first place Uh, properly sanitizingdecoding your HTML content is the subject of another discussion worthy of a separate Stack. Overflow search if you need more information. Tamil Christian Songs Free Download Lyrics here.