You could do it that way:

Start your day with pinging your servers first.

Place all your linked servers in a table like below on a master server:

Server_ID Server_Name     Status

1             Server#1           ...

If you have an access to the linked server, why don't you created a job, run it, save results to the table and analyze it....

Try to schedule reindexing on the weekend, putting your Database in simple recovery mode before that process.

I would suggest to replace

EXEC sp_dropserver 'yourServerName'

with

EXEC sp_dropserver 'yourServerName,'droplogins'

Sometimes you might need to insert few dummy records in your DB before shrinking....

see if this link can help you: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;328551

see if this link can help you: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;328551

Could be a little premature at this point, but anyway... Make sure that when you restart your machine, you have to restart your counters too! 

Just to add to the above:

Function can return only one resultset at a time. Stored Proc can return more than one resultset at a time.

Also Stored Procs support output parameters while UDF's don`t.

something like that:

Backup LOG Hr_database WITH NO_LOG

GO

DBCC SHRINKFILE ('Hr_database_log',TRUNCATEONLY)

GO

just to add to Remy:

When Drop server make sure if the Mail Profile has been dropped at SQL Server Agent

and check if this server has been dropped from Linked Server`s...

Quick note, Cory: I thought you already have SP4 installed, since I recommended installing hotfix 944 otherwise earlier.

You might want to put your db in simple mode while reindexing, to avoid shrink log later...

Did it help?

Ensure on Both machines: Administrative Tools -> Services.

"Remote Procedure Call" should be started.

SQLDebugger Account on the Server should not be Disabled.

Ensure SQLDebugger has "Log on...