An error occurred while establishing a connection to SQLEXPRESS in Visual Studio 2005

Miscosoft Visual Studio 2005 comes with a personal SQL Server (or SQLEXPRESS).  You may get an error message when trying to add a connection to the SQLEXPRESS server for your project. The ”Add Connection” dialog usually shows your computer name in the “server name” field. You have to add a back slash and the “SQLEXPRESS” string for a sucessful connection (See the figure below).