OK we seem to have found the issue. A consultant had some synonyms in a DB that was pointing to a server that no longer existed. Once we changed the server name in the synonyms now the connection works fine. What is odd the synonyms are at a DB level and we also tried a different DB and it failed when the synonyms in the other DB pointed to the wrong server. Now all the connections work since the synonym server name has been corrected!!!

Thanks to everyone who provided help on this subject!!!