Firstly - I admit I'm very rusty on many aspects - so I could be missing something really obvious and not know it.

Driving me nuts....

Fresh installs of everything.

I came to the same conclusion about removing the initial SQL SERVER EXPRESS lines (I established I could connect with sqlcmd and used SQL SERVER STUDIO EXPRESS to set everything up and connect) - but now I get a different error (whereas before I was getting the database connection error initially)

I now get a :

Server Error in '/dotnetnuke' Application.

---

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Source Error:

Line 73: 
Line 74:             'Determine the Upgrade status and redirect to Install.aspx
Line 75:             Select Case GetUpgradeStatus()
Line 76:                 Case Globals.UpgradeStatus.Install, Globals.UpgradeStatus.Upgrade
Line 77:                     If AutoUpgrade Then

Source File: C:\website\dotnetnuke\App_Code\Global.asax.vb    Line: 75

Any help appreciated!

Thanks,