Index was outside the bound of the array

Today I was trying to connect to SQL Server 2012 using SQL Server 2008 Management studio and management studio throws the below error. 

Then I tried the same with SQL Server 2005 Management studio to connect to SQL Server 2008 and also SQL Server 2012 and it returned the same error. It did not show any useful information under Technical details.

The main reason of above errors is SSMS is only backward compatible, it is not forward compatible. It means we can connect to lower version of SQL Server from higher version of SSMS but we cannot connect higher versoin SQL Server with lower version of SSMS.

The best way to upgrade all client tools to higher version and now you can connect to all version of SQL Server.