Sql Server Connection Problem

Running a c# 2.0 windows application, connecting to sql server 2005 standard edition, gave me the following error:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 - Could not open a connection to SQL Server)

The error occured when the connection was being opened.

On further drilling down in the debugger, it gave additional information as follows:

ServerVersion = 'DatabaseManager.Connection.ServerVersion' threw an exception of type 'System.InvalidOperationException'

Now, here the problem started. I was misled by the ServerVersion related information and thought that it had something to do with the server version and my efforts were targeted to that error.

After several hours of searching through all sort of sites and changing stuff, finally found the problem:

The connection string, though looked fine, had a problem:

string conn = "Data Source=theserver\release;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;User id=sa;password=xyz;";

Since, I had created a string variable and was assigning the connection string, the instance not being the default instance, had to use a convention server\instance for the data source.

Now the \ was being taken as the escape character and trying to do all sorts of things.
The fix:
change the single \ to \\, escape the \.

string conn = "Data Source=theserver\\release;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;User id=sa;password=xyz;";

Hope this saves your time.