SQL Management Studio - "Server name" duplicity

Question

hHi, where (or how) can I edit items on "Server name" list?

when I start SQL SMS, there is "Connect to Server" window - in it, there is "Server name:" field. problem is, that I have same values twice. "WDOLKON\SQLEXPRESS" which is instance of local SQL Express server. connection settings is identical, but it is listed twice for some reason - item was created after second connection to this server maybe (?).
I was looking for any configuration file, and I have found a .xml on Application Data, but it did not contain much conrete values. so I think, it is "hidden" in binary file on same directory.

is there any way, how to remove one of these records?

Answer 1

 Hi

AFAIK Removing a particular record is not possible, but you can remove all the connections by doing this.
You can blow away all your Most Recently Used lists (including MRU connections) by deleting c:\Documents and Settings\<you>\Application Data\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell\mru.dat while Management Studio is not running. Management Studio will recreate the file the next time it starts.

Thanks
Sreekar

Answer 2

i'm using SQL Server Management Studio 10.0.1600.22 (for SQL server 2008). there is no "MRU" file :((

Answer 3

 Hi

User settings like recently used server list are stored in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Shell\SqlStudio.bin. If you rename this file and relaunch ssms, you would not see the MRU server list

Thanks
Sreekar

Answer 4

:) thanks ;)

Answer 5

Looks like this file is a binary serialized version of the Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.UserSettings.SqlStudio class defined in the Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.UserSettings, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91 assembly (located at c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.UserSettings.dll).

 

With a bit of development skill (Visual Studio or even Powershell) you can deserialize this file into the original class, find the entries you want to remove and re-serialize the file back out.

 

This should give you the idea (working on a copy of the .bin file)...

 

  var binaryFormatter = new BinaryFormatter();

  var inStream = new MemoryStream(File.ReadAllBytes(@"c:\temp\SqlStudio.bin"));

  var settings = (SqlStudio) binaryFormatter.Deserialize(inStream);

  foreach (var pair in settings.SSMS.ConnectionOptions.ServerTypes)

  {

        ServerTypeItem serverTypeItem = pair.Value;

        List<ServerConnectionItem> toRemove = new List<ServerConnectionItem>();

        foreach (ServerConnectionItem server in serverTypeItem.Servers)

        {

                if (server.Instance != "the server you want to remove")

                {

                        continue;

                }

                toRemove.Add(server);

        }

        foreach (ServerConnectionItem serverConnectionItem in toRemove)

        {

                serverTypeItem.Servers.RemoveItem(serverConnectionItem);

        }

  }

  

  MemoryStream outStream = new MemoryStream();

  binaryFormatter.Serialize(outStream, settings);

  byte[] outBytes = new byte[outStream.Length];

  outStream.Position = 0;

  outStream.Read(outBytes, 0, outBytes.Length);

  File.WriteAllBytes(@"c:\temp\SqlStudio.bin", outBytes);

 

Answer 6

that almost works, except that it is not marked as serializable in that dll.

---

Gray Knight

 

I found the answer here, that takes what is above, but added the reflection part to allow re-serialization.

 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6230159/how-to-delete-server-entries-in-sql-server-management-studios-connect-to-server