First time user.

I ran a discovery report after the installation of SQL EXPRESS 2014.  There is no instance or instance id. I also do not see any services running. When I launch management studio I do not know what to do with the server name entry.  I just want to connect to something so I can load a database and run through a training course. 

SQL Express use localhost\SQLEXPRESS as default instance,

Please try to use localhost\SQLEXPRESS or <your-computer-name>\SQLEXPRESS.

Thanks.

First time user.

I ran a discovery report after the installation of SQL EXPRESS 2014.  There is no instance or instance id. I also do not see any services running. When I launch management studio I do not know what to do with the server name entry.  I just want to connect to something so I can load a database and run through a training course. 

Hi Collector_Edi,

Firstly, please make sure that you select the SQLEXPRADV package or SQLEXPRWT package to install SQL Server Express 2014 from this download link. These two installation packages contain SQL Server database engine and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), with them, you can successfully load database to make test.

Secondly, please make sure that SQL Server 2014 Express is installed successfully. You can post the summary and detail logs for analysis if you fail to install it. By default, the logs can be found in: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\120\Setup Bootstrap\Log.

Thirdly, after successfully installing SQL Server 2014 Express, you can check if SQL Server Service is running using SQL Server Configuration Manager.

There is also an article about how to connect to SQL Server database engine for your reference.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345332.aspx

Thanks,
Lydia Zhang

Determine Whether the Database Engine Is Installed and Started(https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms366339.aspx)

I am sure you did not installed database engine component you just installed SSMS. To install DB engine please browse This link  then click on download and download below

Express 64BIT\SQLEXPR_x64_ENU.exe and install it