I recently installed a new SQL Server 2008 instance on a brand new Windows 2008 R2. When I tried to connect to said instance using Management studio on my desktop i received the following error message:

"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: TCP Provider, error: 0 - A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 10060)"

An initial google search on the error returned a whole bunch of information on SQL Server 2005 and enabling remote connections. Well you don't need to 'enable remote connections' as such in SQL Server 2008 but I did check that the TCP/IP protocol had been enabled in configuration manager.

I then found a useful SQL Server 2008 post which can be found here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb326282.aspx . This suggested that the problem was related to the Firewall blocking remote connection. I got followed the advice and got the firewall reconfigured and I was able to connect.