>>>>TCP/IP is not enabled by default. Use the configuration manager, choose protcols for your instance and turn on tcp/ip. That should solve your problem.

Thank you, but I forgot to mention I had already done that in the Surface Tool Configurator.

Any other ideas? No matter what I do I can't connect to a database. I even made a database visually, then tried a connect string, same error message.

Help?!?!?! Thanks in advance.