How to fix Visual Studio's error “This server version is not supported…” for SQL Server 2012

Question

I recently installed Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2012 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine - (including all updates/Service Packs).

When attempting to work on a

Answer 1

This error could also occur if you use the wrong provider. A recently came across the "This server version is not supported...." error and after changing the provider from sqlClient Data Provider to SQL Server Native Client 11.0 in the connection string for the Data Source configuration the problem was solved.