On the second attempt to build my Virtual Development Environment all went as before, until I got to Task 8 on the Configuration Wizard. During this task I was presented with the SqlException message, stating that an exception was thrown when attempting to open the Shared Services database. This was annoying, it worked just fine the first time round and I didn’t do anything different as far as I know, so why did it now fail?

I fumbled about for a bit, trying unsuccessfully to rerun the Configuration Wizard and getting the same error. I turned to my colleague Alistair Laing who quickly boiled the problem down to the configuration of the SQL Server TCP/IP network protocols which were disabled.

With TCP/IP enabled, Task 8 completed successfully following another run of the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard.

Thanks Alistair!