[2005] getting mssql error can't seem to find out why

[vbdotnetboy]

has anyone had and resolved this error before? i've searched and found a lot about it but it doesn't seem as though anyone has a solution for it

A transport-level error has occurred when receiving results from the server. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - The specified network name is no longer available.

[mendhak]

Depends on what troubleshooting steps you've taken. The first thing I'd do is check to see if I can connect via Management Studio, and if I can, then check the firewall.

[vbdotnetboy]

yea that was the first thing we tried. it happens every so often. it's happening on a clients machine that is connecting via vpn.

[mendhak]

Can you then perform other network connectivity tests? For example, try connecting via ftp to a machine in the network. Or setting up some other software to check the bandwidth health. Your network admins may also be able to shed light on this issue.

[techgnome]

the connection is being dropped. I've seen that error before. Bottom line, the connection to the sever is dropped and is no longer available. It usually happens when you have an open connection to the database and the server goes "off line".

What can you do about it? Not much. Handle the error, save the datalocally and let the user know what the server is no longer available. Other than that, there isn't too much. It's probably easier in this case to test the connection first somehow, make sure the server is still there before actually doing DB access.

-tg

[vbdotnetboy]

it seems as though we may have found the cause and a possible solution. we ended up find a knowledgebase article from microsoft about 3 possible error... this being one of them, with a win2k3 server with 2 specific NIC cards. long story short the client has win2k3 with the one particular NIC card... so basically they are going to one try and update the firmware and/or drivers... if that doesn't work i believe they are planning on purchasing a different card.

the strangest thing about all of this is that when this exception is being thrown it's actually within a try catch block but seems like it completely ignores it and crashes the whole app... we've traced it and it makes no sense why it's crashing the app and not being handled within the try catch.

i don't want to say this is resolved, but in a way it is... i'll be bad later to mark it though.