I just spent a few hours fiddling with a new 4.3.5 Install, setting all the file permissons and such, configuring IIS and so on and so on.  Got everything working excecpt the connection to SQL Express.  (First time using it, always use SQL)  After googling for an hour trying to debug the connection, I just commented out the SQLExpress connection keys and used the SQL 2000/2005 section and it worked great.

So the two connection strings ended up looking like this:

<!-- Connection String for SQL Server 2005 Express commented this crud out:
    <add
      name="SiteSqlServer"
      connectionString="Data Source=.\SQLExpress;Integrated Security=True;User Instance=True;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|DotNetNuke.mdf;"
      providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />-->
  <!-- Connection String for SQL Server 2000/2005--> Uncommented this one:
  <add name="SiteSqlServer" connectionString="Server=MachineName\SQLEXPRESS;Database=DotNetNuke;uid=sa;pwd=password;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

And the string below (for legacy modules):

<add key="SiteSqlServer" value="Server=MachineName\SQLEXPRESS;Database=DotNetNuke;uid=sa;pwd=password;"/>

That seemed to do the trick.  Does anyone know any reason this won't work down the road?

Hope this helps someone banging their head against SQL Express.

Weezy

sqlExpress string only works as long as you don't touch the database using sql management studio.

WHY?