I upgraded from SQl server 05 to 08 and had a few issues. After uninstalling 05 and a few restarts later 08 installed okay, but now I don't have any SQL Server services running.
I can't connect to (local)\SQLExpress or .\SQLEXPRESS via SQL Server management studio and the SQL Server services dialog shows no services. There's no add button anywhere there, so how do I add a new service?
Do I have do this programmatically or something?
I've had similar issues and the solution we used was to reinstall SQL server 2008 and at the point where it asks you for default instance or named instance, used a named instance and continue on.
This does not affect any currently installed instances but creates a new instance of the name supplied and then from there on should be usable.
If it's an instance you want to create you might wanna have a look at this question - it might work the same way