Brandie Tarvin (11/28/2012)
Do you have Auto_Close enabled on your SQL Server properties?
I do not. I'm looking at it right now. AutoCreate and AutoUpdate Statistics are both true, AutoClose, AutoShrink and Asynchronous Update Stats are all false.
That's the first thing I would check. If not, then I would get a network sniffer running while you try to establish the connection again. See if that tells you anything.
I don't have one at hand. Is there a downloadable freeware or trial version of something that you would recommend? I've never used one, so I have no idea what would do an adequate job for this.
Other options are to do a tracert and a ping from the location of this particular Access db to see if that machine can even hit the SQL server.
EDIT: It's also giving an "Access Denied" in that error, so I'd check permissions too.
What would that tell me? The app does run for a while, and not just warming up - it communicates with the server quite nicely, sending requests for data and getting them back in milliseconds, for around a minute, then something jacks and the connection gets dropped/broken/refused/something. And the reconnect dialog hooks it back together, often on the first try.