Error message when you change the IP address on a SQL Server failover cluster node: "Bind failed"

Attempts to bring a SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005 virtual instance online on a cluster may fail, or the SQL Server virtual instance on the cluster may come online successfully, but the SQL Server virtual instance on the cluster will only listen on Named Pipes. Client connections made over Named Pipes will succeed, but client connections over TCP/IP fail.

The SQL Server error log reports the following error message if the Virtual SQL Server does not successfully bind to port 1433: If the Virtual SQL Server is set to bind to 0 or a dynamic port, the Virtual SQL Server still unsuccessfully binds and an error message similar to the following occurs: This article discusses one possible cause of this error message. The information in this article helps only if you are experiencing this exact same scenario. For other possible causes of the error message, see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Changing the Virtual SQL Server IP address with the Cluster Administrator tool. For a default instance of virtual SQL Server, the following registry value points to a previous IP address:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\Cluster

For a named instance of virtual SQL Server, the following registry value points to a previous IP address:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\Instance Name\Cluster\ClusterIpAddr

To resolve the problem, follow the steps in Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q244980 for the correct way to change the Virtual SQL Server IP address. When you get to step 7 in the "More Information" section of the article, select Remove and replace an existing IP Address: If you are using SQL Server 2005, follow the steps described in the "How to: Change the IP Address of a SQL Server 2005 Failover Cluster" topic in SQL Server Books Online to resolve the problem.