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We have a few developers that work, connecting in through a VPN for access to the development SQL Server 2012. Historically they've used Win7 machines and develop the website against this database in Visual Studio, using the built-in webserver for debugging. This worked great forever. There is no domain, the user just creates an identical windows account on the dev server with identical username/password, we add the user to a DBAdmin group, and magic, it works.

With the advent of Win8, you can (and are pushed to) use a Microsoft Account (read: live/passport account) to log into your local machine. There are benefits to doing so, such as sync of app and OS settings between machines, etc., as well as not having to type in your live id/password everytime you do something.

If you convert your local account to a Microsoft Account, you can no longer use trusted connections to connect to the SQL Server, as it apparently completely subsumes your original local account.

Does anyone know of a way to create a user on say a Server 2003 or Server 2008 machine that will somehow match the live account being used? I imagine this is going to be a headache for people not just because of trusted connections, but also file sharing, though with file sharing there's a work-around of being able to connect with the account and check a box to save the username/password, that option doesn't exist for SQL Server connections.

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You can't do the matching automatically. Perhaps using something like ADFS, but I'm not sure.

Instead, after connecting to the VPN, start SQL Server Management Studio using RUNAS.

From a command prompt or shortcut:

C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /user:DOMAIN\user /NETONLY "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Tools\Binn\ManagementStudio\Ssms.exe"
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This one definitely did the trick. Thanks! –  Kiliman Jan 27 at 14:17
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The last post was deleted by Chris S (thanks for that) I thought it was reasonable to ask the OP whether he had found a solution. Since he posted the question nearly 3 weeks ago - perhaps he found one and simply forgot to update the thread? I have found a workaround, I hope this post will not be deleted, as it may well help someone else.

As far as I can tell, you cannot use windows authentication with the new style windows (8) accounts. You need to switch to a local account.

You just need to go to the settings charm ---> pc settings ----> users and switch to a local account.

This seems like a strange decision by Microsoft, basically forcing people like myself into using the non cloud connected account (to all their services and app store) just so that I can keep my local domain account and talk to my server etc. I think the problem basically lies in the fact that the username is now an email address, well I cannot setup an account on server 2008 with an email address - perhaps this will come in an update soon - who knows.

In truth it's no great loss, I don't hate Metro - but it's not exactly that useful in the desktop environment imho. As far as I can tell using a purely local account only really impacts the metro apps, which I don't use..If anyone can improve on this solution I would love to hear it.

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I have not found a solution other than using a local account or dropping trusted connection and going with SQL Auth. –  InsidiousForce Dec 3 '12 at 20:20
Windows 8 is such a disaster in so many ways and this is one of them. There appears to be no way to make this happen. We've all gone back to using local accounts and until there's some kind of update it will stay that way. –  InsidiousForce May 13 '13 at 22:14
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