Try installing the latest version of MDAC on the clients who need to connect to SQL.  I've had issues in the past when clients had older versions like 2.5.  Upgrading...

Check out this link http://www.sqlservercentral.com/scripts/contributions/563.asp

"Changing the Owner of a Single DTS Package"

This is what I use for changing ownership.

I had a similiar problem with pull replication over a sometimes troublesome WAN connection.  Within the Distribution agent profile settings, I increased the 'Query Timeout' setting.  This seemed to fix...

When I first saw the question, first movie I thought of was WarGames.