Trying to recover some disk space by shrinking the size of our WSUS database, or at least figure out why it's so big, I tried to connect to the Windows Internal Database in SQL Server Management Studio (using the \.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query database name I've seen referenced in multiple places) and got an error:
Cannot connect to
\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Login failed for user '[ourdomain]/[myusername]'. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18456)
Server Name: \.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query
Error Number: 18456
Severity: 14
State: 1
Line Number: 65536
My account has domain administrator privileges, so I don't understand why it wouldn't work.
The help link it gives me says that "If your error indicates state 1, contact your SQL Server administrator" (who, unfortunately, is me).
I also tried the WsusDBMaintenance script from here, which should apparently just work, and got the same "Login failed for user" message.
Update: I found the corresponding entries in the error log, which say:
2009-10-09 14:13:51.30 Logon Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 11. 2009-10-09 14:13:51.30 Logon Login failed for user '[domain]\[user]'. [CLIENT: <named pipe>]
It says here that state 11 = "Valid login but server access failure".
Best Answer
Since this is a Windows 2008 server, most likely, the User Access Control is causing the issue.
When you want to connect the instance, right click on SSMS and Run as Administrator. And give the above name pipe, you should be able to get in.