Configure Microsoft SQL Server for Mixed Mode Authentication

This article descibes how to setup mixed mode authentication, also known as SQL Authentication, in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

No GUI tool is available for SQL Server 2005 Express Edition to configure the server. One can do this manually. If SQL server server is configured to use Windows NT authentication, you can change this to Mixed mode as below.

To verify the authentication mode, using SQL Server Management Studio Express, run the commands as follows.

EXEC xp_loginconfig 'login mode'

• Open registry editor (Run -> regedit) and go to 
• HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQLServer in the tree on the left. 
• On the right, look for an entry named LoginMode. 
• The default value, when installed is 1. 
• Update it to 2.

The next step is to restart the service.

1. Launch your Service Manager (Start -> Run -> Type services.msc) and look for a service named MSSQL Server (SQLEXPRESS). 
2. Restart the service.