Configuring SQL Server for external access on Windows 2003

Recently I was trying to expose SQL Server for external access on a Windows 2003 server. I ran into several issues:

• Port 1433 was blocked by the firewall. This serverfault article explains how to detect and correct this


• The TCP/IP filters for inbound access had to be altered. This Microsoft article describes doing this

In retrospect neither of these issues are surprising, but especially the TCP/IP filter issue took me some time to track down, so perhaps this will help someone else.

Windows installer clean up utility

I recently found myself with a program that did not uninstall cleanly and it left enough of a mess that I could reinstall it. After some searching around, I found this tool from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301

It discusses cleanup of Office installs on XP, but I found it to work fine on other programs on 64-bit Vista. Give it a try the next time you have a program that won't uninstall.