I talked to a MS Support guy and he said there is a hotfix not published on their site because it is going into SP1 for 2003 Server. Here is the email he sent me after I talked on the phone with him (I'm going to create a new topic for this because it is important):

The hot fix for your issue has been packaged and placed on an HTTP site for you to download.

WARNING: This fix is not publicly available through the Microsoft website as it has not gone through full Microsoft regression testing.  If you would like confirmation that this fix is designed to address your specific problem, or if you would like to confirm whether there are any special compatibility or installation issues associated with this fix, you are encouraged to speak to a Support Professional in Product Support Services.

The package is password protected so be sure to enter the appropriate password for each package.  To ensure the right password is provided cut and paste the password from this mail.

NOTE: Passwords expire every 7 days so download the package within that period to insure you can extract the files.  If you receive two passwords it means you are receiving the fix during a password change cycle.  Use the second password if you download after the indicated password change date.

Package:
-----------------------------------------------------------
KB Article Number(s): 838306
Language: English
Platform: i386
Location: ( http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/Windows%20Server%202003/sp1/Fix102757/3790/free/184439_ENU_i386_zip.exe - http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/Windows%20Server%202003/sp1/Fi x102757/3790/free/184439_ENU_i386_zip.exe )
Password: ae^8WmiWHX

NOTE: Be sure to include all text between '(' and  ')' when navigating to this hot fix location!

Thanks!

I believe this issue only occurs under heavy load conditions. Your DB may be moderately loaded, but it's the server load that causes the condition.

• You may want to see how many users your host runs on a w2k3 server compared to other hosts. I think you'll find that the load falls along price lines.
• Also, check with them to see what configuration options they use for w23k hosting... there's more than one and the most attractive ones for a hosting company just aren't reliable.
• A lot of hosting companies have stayed away from w23k for stability issues like this and others. It needs another service pack or two.

I do thank you for pointing this out though. Could save some scrambling for an answer in the future. However, If any one directly downloads and runs an exe they find in a newsgroup on their server, I need to talk to them about a bridge I have for sale in metropolitan NYC. I don't are what the uri looks like.

Link to the KB article with instructions on obtaining the free patch are at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;838306 - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;8383 06

Sorry about posting this in two places.

By the way, the 2K3 server I'm talking about is mine, not some host, so I know how heavy a load it is under and it isn't under much load (relative) compared to what kind of hardware I built it with; dual 2800+ with 4 gig of DDR RAM and fast mirrored drives. For all this power, it is only running a few moderately used web sites (approx 600 visitors/day for a couple sites and a few more that are more like 200 visitors/day and maybe ten more that are like 20 visitors/day). I talked to the guys at Microsoft for awhile about this issue and this bug doesn't take much Jet ADO use to cause it to act up. Since I patched, the server has shown no problems with any of the sites, but then it has only been a full day now. I'll keep you all posted if you want.

Your intentions were good, you were trying to alert people - lot different than when someone posts the dessriptive title "Help Me" in 3 or 4 places.

This is the first time I've heard about this situation, but it certainly doesn't sound like your servers are overloaded. Just for my own info...
Did you try bouncing iis to clear the problem? The only time I'd seen an access lockup was when someone was opening connections in global.asa and bouncing iis cleared the connections. That was on a w2k server though.

I'd appreciate it if you'd follow up here if the problem returns as I'll be turning up a couple of w2k3 servers later this year.

Yeah this problem is not one that occurred in W2K. It is specific to W2K3. I still have a W2K server running and identical sites run fine on the W2K box.

The only unknown here is how many simultaneous ADO/ODBC connections to an Access database will cause the particular application pool to go down.

Going into day two (since the hotfix) now with nothing having gone down. This is compared to pre-hotfix when the moderate-traffic sites were going down two to three times a day.