01-How to check if Microsoft SQL Server exists on your machine

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In order to check if a SQL Server instance is available on your machine, you can follow the following steps:

-Go to Start || Programs || Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (if you don’t see this group, probably, Microsoft SQL Server Tools are probably not installed). You may also end up with this group if you installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2008/2010 (but not all tools related to Microsoft SQL Server 2008)
-Expand Microsoft SQL Server 2008 || Configuration Tools. You should see “SQL Server Configuration Manager”. If not, you should have Microsoft SQL Server 2008 tools re-installed on your machine.
-Once you open “SQL Server Configuration manager”, click on “SQL Server Services” available in left pane.
-You should see list of “SQL Server Services” either stopped (red)/running(green). If you don’t see any services at all (say blank), no SQL Server Instance was installed on your machine.
-In order to work with SQL Server databases (locally on your machine), you should have at least one “SQL Server” service running. Sometimes, you may have multiple “SQL Server Instances” running on the same machine (ending up with, multiple “SQL Server” services). This may be possible if you installed Microsoft Visual Studio on your machine.
-The instance name is always the name in parentheses