MS Access Issue, Need Help

[Solignis]

This one is stumping me and I'm running out of time to fix it. We have a computer that connects to an MSSQL server using MS Access 2002 in order to read and write to our customer order DB. Recently it has shown an odd problem, the machine will attempt to connect to the DB and it throws the error "Data Provider cannot be Initialized", So I talked to some people and they said to reload access. So I did and the problem went away, but next day the problem came back. One of my co-workers thinks the machine is dropping off the network and that the DB is loosing connectivity with that client and it times out. So I did some test, mainly download and connection tests and I found nothing. Everything appears to be fine but it is not, I have for the most part ruled out spyware / malware / viruses, because the machine does not run slow. So I'm running out of ideas because I'm more of a hardware guy myself, If anyone can give some kind of idea to try I'm open to anything.

[mdh]

If Attack Blocker is installed, look to see if you have any events associated with the IP of the database box (client or server side). Are both boxes in your LAN?

[Solignis]

Where the problem is happening there is no UT box.....yet
and the machine and the server are less than 100 feet from each other more like 10.


Come to think of it there is no UT box where the problem is, but all authentication traffic is coming through a UT box to our main office for processing, could it be the attack blocker there ?

[sky-knight]

Perhaps, but I doubt. Most of the time DB connectivity issues all boil down to the network just being over loaded. I'm seeing a similar thing with a customer right now with their Shelby accounting application. As soon as I put another gigabit nic in the server, planted it on the network and got DNS to round robin the clients... problem smoothed right over.

[Solignis]

Only 4 people are in the office and they have a dedicated server with more than enough power.

[proactivens]

DB issues are hard to nail down some times. Does this application use a dedicated driver, or does it use an ODBC entry? Type odbcad32 into a windows command shell and see if the ODBC entry (if there is one) is using an IP address or a dns name to find the database server. It may turn out to be a dns problem.

One other thing, which Im sure you have already done, make sure the windows firewall is turned off. Sometimes after a service pack update the windows firewall will turn its self back on.