Connection Dialog does not appear in Management Studio

Question

When I open my Management Studio program, it does not open up the connection dialog like it used to. It gives me a dialog box which says:

Object Reference not set to an instance of an object.

Anyone got any idea how to fix this?

Answer 1

What version of SQL server is this?

Review some of the possible solutions here:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/c588b06e-7002-40ba-bf59-7e7c9decaf23/object-reference-not-set-to-an-instance-of-an-object-unable-to-finish-the-sql-2012-installation-on

https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/718182/management-studio-object-reference-not-set-to-an-instance-of-an-object

Answer 2

When the Management Studio initializes, it opens a modal connection dialog box that for some reason is not accessible.

The solution is to press Ctrl+N which will close the dialog box. When you click Connect in Management Studio, it will now open the dialog in the middle of the Management Studio window.