Vista Visual Studio and SQLExpress Intergration

It seems that the way visual studio understands the SQLExpress server name has changed or that security settings have disabled the .SQLExpress syntax (which obviously meant local computer SQLExpress instance) on Vista. So if you try to create a new database from the AddItem menu item of visual studio 2005 or connect to an existing one that uses the above syntax in the connection string you will most probably get an error saying that “failed to generate a user instance of sql server”.
What you’ll have to do (this took me a while to figure out, so you should thank me 🙂 ) is modify the server name/instance to the fully qualified one. If you want to create a new database you should first create it from the management studio, then add it to your project and modify the connection string.