Thanks for the reply, however - I've posted back to the list
as I am sure other people may be having the same problem,
but have not actually identified it.

> Your statement is untrue: W2K don't disable TCP/IP network in case of error. I have same setup (remote connection, local connection). If my remote connection dies local TCP/IP connection is still working. It must be sth. others.

I have three machines with W2kSP2 on and if you pull the
cable on any of them, you can no longer connect to local
copy of Firebird. This is not a good example, but it seems
any 'break' in the network that W2k thinks is a cable fault
gives the same effect. I don't rule out this being a network
card problem, but they all have different network cards as
we have been hit by that before.

As long as W2k does not 'detect' a network fault everthing
is OK. I can pull a cable between hubs to break the
connection and W2k is quite happy, but none of these
problems happen with W98SE or NT4SP6a on the same hardware.

Since identifying the cause, checks on our test system have
shown that the lockups are all as a result of W2k deciding
that there was a fault on a connection through Frame Relay,
which SHOULD just look like pulling the cable between hubs,
but W2k does not like it <g>. Since it may only happens a
couple of times a week it has been difficult to establish
the exact problem, but I can't see anything I can do at the
database connection level to compensate for it. I'm using
IBO which now normally copes with these problems, but since
W2k needs to be kicked to wake it up again I think I am
stuck. I can restart the program, but I can't run while W2k
thinks the cable is broken, again NT4 is perfectly stable
and has now run for months without problem.

--
Lester Caine
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L.S.Caine Electronic Services