First I thought that even though I was logged in as Admin, I wasn’t getting DB admin privileges. This turned out to be true. By default, an admin user doesn’t have any login on the SQL DB. I then added my windows login to the database. Still no success. so I tried SQL login using sa. Still same result. I then thought maybe osql wasn’t running as admin. This also turned out to be true. By default, in Vista, the command shell does not run with admin privileges even if you are logged in as one. You need to do ctrl-shift-enter when you type “cmd” to get a command shell that runs as admin. However this didn’t work either. I finally got in installed by running Sql Server Management Studio Express (as Administrator) and choosing Attach…

One more problem I had was that for some reason, despite pointing it to the mdf file. It insisted in locating the original path where the mdf file was installed (which was on a different machine and thus didn’t exist on this machine). To get it to work I had to recreate the same directory structure that held the mdf file on the other machine, copy the mdf into it then point it to that mdf file. Also, it didn’t work if I left out the ldf file.

Steve – I was doing the article using Win Server 2k3, but thanks for pointing and highligthing ldf file needed. I encountered the issue you faced a month ago.