Solution for “Server is in single user mode. Only one administrator can connect at this time.”

Posted on by kjartan

I ran into the error message in the title today, while trying to access a database on my local machine after upgrading various stuff. Among other things, I had installed the newest version of Microsoft SQL Server, and now I could not access my DB. Here’s how I fixed it.

It took me a little while, but I eventually found the cause: For some reason an -mhad been added to the list of parameters used when starting up the service that runs the database server. If you’re in the same situation, you’ll find this in the application Sql Server Configuration Manager.

Right click SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) and select the tab Startup Parameters:

Click to select and remove the parameter “-m”

I don’t know why the -m parameter was there to begin with – perhaps I’d configured it that way unwittingly during the installation.

In any case, selecting and removing it and restarting the service MSSQLSERVER fixed my problem, and let me access my database again.

PS: Still not working? Look for an -f

A few other posts I read indicate that an -f parameter can have the same effect, so you might want to look for that if the above doesn’t fix your problem.

A Git alias for logs, Version 2.0

Posted on by kjartan

A while back, I wrote a post about how to improve the log command in git by adding a customized alias for it. I’ve been fairly happy with that alias, but I kept missing one thing: A date, or some similar indicator of the age of each commit. Today, I finally set aside time to improve it, and here`s the result:

lg = log --format=\"%h: %Cgreen%an %ar %Creset(%ci) %n         %s\" -10
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Extending the lock screen screen timeout Windows 10

Posted on by kjartan

I lock my PC every time I leave it (Shortcut: Win + L), and until recently, that would cause my screen to shut off too after only a minute. When it can take upwards of 30 seconds to turn the screen back on, that can get pretty annoying if you’re just gone for that one minute.

You would perhaps think there was a simple setting for adjusting the time it takes before your screen turns off – and there is – but for some reason, it seems to be disabled and hidden in Windows by default. To enable it, you’ll need to make a change to your Windows registry. Once you’ve done that, you can easily adjust the timeout as you like.

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VS Reference Blues

Posted on by kjartan

When code builds but looks invalid, and intellisense is dead

I recently encountered what I at first thought was a bug in Visual Studio, but which turned out to be a poorly described configuration error on my part.

The problem manifests itself like this:

Apparent reference errors
It looks like references are missing, and intellisense is broken, but the code still builds and runs correctly.
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