[2005] Why only SQL Express?

I have Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition and SQL Server 2000 Enterprise installed on the same laptop.

While creating a project in VB Express, I try to add a data connection but it never connects because VB Express thinks it is connection to SQL Express.

Under the advanced properties for the data connection it says "data source = .\SQLEXPRESS".

How do I get it to connect to SQL Server 2000 Enterprise? Or is that one of the hidden limitations to using the free express edition of VS?

Any software you can create with a grown up version of VS you can create with an Express version too. You may just have to do more of the work manually. I don't have VB Express handy so I can't test whether it will create a Data Source for other versions of SQL Server or not. That doesn't mean that you can't connect to other databases though. Once you've created your Data Source you may be able to simply perform a Find & Replace to change the instance name. If not then you may not be able to create a Data Source, but you can still create a typed DataSet yourself. Anyway, a Data Source is just a design time tool and has no meaning at run time. You can connect to SQL Server Express while debugging and then change the connection string at run time to access a different server when released.