Friday, August 16, 2013

Cannot find NT Service\MSSQL$SQL2012?

If you cannot find the virtual account used by the default settings installation of your SQL 2012 instance (in this case running on Windows 7), try searching for:
nt service\mssql

























You must have the "Built-in security principals" object type selected, and you must be searching on your local machine name (not in the domain).










Frustratingly, searching for the virtual account does not work for these strings:
  • MSSQL$SQL2012
  • MSSQL
  • nt service
  • nt service\
  • NT
Which is misleading...



2 comments:

Yvonne said...

I have recently installed SQL 2012 and in the middle of experimenting the application. I have had same issue of not being able to find the virtual account used by default installation. I've followed the above instructions but am still having the Name Not Found error message. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

Anonymous said...

Hello Yvonne,

This is a late reply, but maybe will help someone searching for a solution on this issue.

Stumbled on the same issue,

The reason you cannot find NT Service\MSSQL$SQL2012 is because you are probably searching in a different location than your local machine.
Try searching on the local machine:
Select Locations... and select the name of your machine, then you will be able to find NT Service\MSSQL$SQL2012

Hope this was helpful,