Recently I installed SQL Server 2008 RC0 but was having some difficulty with the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) on a server where my login do not have access to all the databases.  This is specially troublesome as I needed to work on some websites at Brinskster which is a shared hosting and of course I won’t have access to most of the databases on the server.

The error message looks like this:

The server principal “…” is not able to access the database “…” under the current security context.

Here is a workaround:

1. Wait for the message to come out and click the OK button.

2. Select Databases then press F7. (This opens up the Object Explorer Details on the right hand pane)

3. On the right hand pane (Object Explorer Details), right click on the columns and unselect Collation.  It seemed that querying the collation causes the access problem.

4.  Refresh the Database node and the list should come out.

:-)