Hi There,

Run visual Studio and open the Server Explorer window.

Select Add Connection

Select Microsoft SQL Server Client

Select the running Server instance from the drop down box. Click Refresh if necessary. If you see no instance VS cannot see or connect to SQL Server.

If you see any databases in the Select or enter a database name drop down, you definitely have a working server instance.

Assuming that you see the database you want, you can go to your code and instantiate a SQLConnection object and use that instead of the path to the database file in your DataContext constructor.

That should at least give you a fighting chance.

I am no LinqToSQL expert as I use Entity Framework to generate my contexts but I hope this might help.

regards