So this is my second attempt to install Visual Studio 2012. After installing i fired up my project in Visual Studio 2010 to continue development as normal, but when entity framework attempts to connect to SQL 2008, it times out with the error:

“A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the pre-login handshake.”

After a couple hours of pulling my hair out. I found a very simple fix!

Fire up your command console (with Administrative privileges) and run the command:

netsh Winsock reset

You may have to restart your computer to complete the reset.

I was able to find the solution on:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-NZ/vssetup/thread/2d11b6f9-3ada-4682-b643-c721a97af4ba