odbc sql server driver communication link failure

Question

I have an Access 2003 front-end with SQL 2005 back-end. Occasionally, users get the error below and the front-end crashes. Any pointers as to how I can resolve this?

[ODBC SQL Server Driver] Communication link failure

Answer 1

From the googling and reading I have done on this topic, it seems to me that this might simply be a bug in MS Access that they've never bothered to fix, ie: there is no resolution.

The symptoms I am seeing and that others seem to have is that the connection Access has to SQL Server becomes "bad", and once it reaches this state, nothing will fix it except restarting Access, period. Although it blows a person's mind, this is entirely possible - if the code related to connection management (either in MS Access itself, or within the ODBC provider) doesn't check validity of the connection state and always assumes it is fine, then we would see exactly the symptoms we are seeing.

You'd think, surely Microsoft would fix this, but it wouldn't be the first time.

Update

I'm seeing the same behavior when using a Microsoft Access Project (*.adp) so the problem appears to be within MS Access itself (as opposed to just ODBC).