I'm having the exact same issue when using a linked server on a SQL Server 2005 instance (target is a SQL 2000 instance).
The exact error is:
OLE DB provider "SQLNCLI" for linked server "server\instance" returned message "Communication link failure".
Msg 10054, Level 16, State 1, Line 0
TCP Provider: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.
Msg 18452, Level 14, State 1, Line 0
Login failed for user '(null)'. Reason: Not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection.
The user getting this error is able to successfully connect to the target instance on SSMS, while logged on the source sql 2005 instance where the linked server is created.
The linked server is created by the following command (note that security is configured for windows integrated auth., NOT SQL auth.):
EXEC sp_addlinkedserver 'server\instance2k', N'SQL Server';
The user is getting the error above after running:
select * from [server\instance2k].DBNAME.dbo.TableName;
I find this issue odd because, as I mentioned, the user is able to connect with no problems to server\instance2k on SSMS, while logged on the sql2005 instance.
I strongly suspect this is the exact same problem as that posted initially on this thread.
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