Mysterious Access Denied Error

Yesterday afternoon I lost access to my local MSDE 2000 sp3(a?)
instance. Usinig NT or SQL authentication I get an 'access denied'
error when I try to connect. This happened suddenly with no changes
to the server on my part. I've tinkered with the Client Network
Utility settings, from Multiprotocol only, every combination of Multi
protocol, TCP/IP, and named pipes. I've tried connecting with my
network machine name, using (local), and using my IP address (both
127.0.0.1 and my network IP). I've tried connecting from Query
Analyzer on other computers. Of course I've rebooted as well, all to
no avail.

I know that there were network changes being made, but my domain login
(which I normally use to connec to my SQL Server as a sysadmin) is
still in the local administrators group on my machine and I haven't
noticed any problems accessing anything else.

Any ideas?MarcosECasa@.yahoo.com (Marcos) wrote in message news:<cf4137bb.0402100934.3c1cc6de@.posting.google.com>...
> Yesterday afternoon I lost access to my local MSDE 2000 sp3(a?)
> instance. Usinig NT or SQL authentication I get an 'access denied'
> error when I try to connect. This happened suddenly with no changes
> to the server on my part. I've tinkered with the Client Network
> Utility settings, from Multiprotocol only, every combination of Multi
> protocol, TCP/IP, and named pipes. I've tried connecting with my
> network machine name, using (local), and using my IP address (both
> 127.0.0.1 and my network IP). I've tried connecting from Query
> Analyzer on other computers. Of course I've rebooted as well, all to
> no avail.
> I know that there were network changes being made, but my domain login
> (which I normally use to connec to my SQL Server as a sysadmin) is
> still in the local administrators group on my machine and I haven't
> noticed any problems accessing anything else.
> Any ideas?

At the risk of asking a silly question, have you checked that the
service is actually running, using NET START for example? If the
service is stopped, then you get the error "SQL Server does not exist
or access denied", whereas if your login is incorrect (security
issue), you would normally get a "Login failed" error instead.

Simon