Error: Login failed for user ”. Reason: Server is in single user mode. Only one administrator can connect at this time.

I encountered this error message during a project to move system databases while having to restart SQL Server service with /f /T3608 trace flags and hence into single user mode. However when trying to log on and issues scripts for moving mssqlresource database, I constantly got denied to access by either SSMS or command line and the error message was the same as the title suggests.

After googling for awhile, here is my working solution:

1. restart SQL Server service in normal mode and change SQL Server access to local connection only (you can do this either by sp_configure or surface area configuration tool).

2. make sure that “shared memory protocol” is enabled in SQL Server configuration manager. Reason is that local connectioins to SQL Server always go through shared memory first.

And then you are all set, try to connect to SQL Server instance locally through sqlcmd and issue whatever scripts that you want. At least I didn’t encounter any trouble under these settings on that day.