During setup, you should have seen this screen:
Assuming you left everything with their default settings, you'll have a default instance known as MSSQLSERVER. One way of checking the instance name is by looking in your services console (services.msc
). There will be a service called 'SQL Server (
'
If your instance has been installed as the default, you can connect to it via SQL Server Management Studio running on the machine itself by using '.
' (a period, by itself), localhost
or your machine name as the server name.
If it's a named instance, you can connect to it by using .\INSTANCENAME
, localhost\INSTANCENAME
or HostName\INSTANCENAME
.