We have several linked SQL servers running both SQL 7 (sp4) and SQL 2000 (sp3). Recently, when we run the following command from SQL 7 query analyzer to a SQL 2000 database, select * from remoteserver.database.dbo.tablename, we get this message:
[OLE/DB provider returned message: Client unable to establish connection]
[DBNMPNTW]ConnectionOpen (CreateFile()).
The databases are linked with specific remote login and password. The same command works the opposite direction, in other words from the SQL 2000 database to SQL 7 database. This was working last week but all of a sudden stopped. Of course, no one admits to changing anything on either of the servers. The SQL 2000 is on Windows 2003 server.
Thanks.
LccTom,
It is possible that some of the recent w2k3 patches disabled the file sharing and remote network connectivity on your w2k3 machine. Can you try if you can remote access to the w2k3 machine, such as file sharing? If you can't, you need to enable the file sharing because the namepipe provider[DBNMPNTW] depends on it.
Also, if you want TCP connection, you need to make firewall exception for the SQL tcp listening port, default to 1433 for a default instance.
|||We have no OS service packs installed but for some reason, it started working again Wednesday morning. Thanks for the reply and I'll make sure to look at the file sharing if it happens again. I reported it to my network people also.