Permissions Sql Express And Remote Connection Problems TIA

posted to the forums a few weeks ago, followed the suggestion but the problem has not been squared, the link for my original post is at the bottom of this message.

have tried most of the suggestions in the forums, again see the link for details on steps i have tried, kept poking around and came up with a few more possibilities for the problem,

the error message is the one that says sql server express remote connnections are not enabled by default during the install of sql express,

backed up a little and it seems i can not even connect to the local machine, i ran the sqlcmd -s -e sqlexpress and the login timesouts and says that sql express refused the connection, have shared memory protocal and tcp/ip running also tried it with named pipes,

so that left me wonderin if maybe permission for sql express need to be adjusted, brought up SQL server Studio Mangement Express console and went to the only express instance on the local machine, brought up properties for sqlexpress and went to the permission section and noticed the following:

for the BuiltInadministrator and builtInUser account the only permission that is checked off is the "Conect SQL" which has only the Grant checkbox checked, also the grantor is sa, btw what does the checkbox With Grant do?? this was the same for the both accounts,

for the public account the only permission that is enabled is the View any database,

are there other permission which need to be granted or "with granted", also i assume i should not be using the sa account or should i?

other things going on include include Visual Studio 2005, i am able to get to the database thru Server Explorer, and can bring up the tables and see them, sometimes thos their is a red x on the mdf, but when i click it brings them up.

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=217258&SiteID=1