Thanks Curtis. That's what I thought, too.

Access could see views, but could not see any data ((or metadata)

After the usual cursing, I went to SQL Analyser, and enter "Select *...

All access to the schema's is by windows groups.

THe problem is simple:

Under SQL 2000, I could create views for users who could not see the tables.

Under SQL 2005, the views...

You can start SQL Server up in Single User mode, bypass the MSDB, detach the MSDB, attach just about any old MSDB (say from a virgin install), shut down SQL,...

A long shot, perhaps, but I am getting similar errors when accessing ODBC from ASP (not ASP.NET). My sense, is that somehoe it is security related...and I don't know what...

Never mind. I saw the information in the first post.

Wonderful - i suspected the answer was something like that. Tables are, indeed, quite large.

I will investigate waht you suggest.

tc

Good advice from fhanlon.

Half of all squirrelly windows surprises are security related.  Want to dump back-ups to a network drive?  Batter have a network user account.  Want to use a...

I've seen this happen (some years ago) when I had multiple long-running transactions.  These transactions wove such a tortuous path through the log files that even after stopping and restarting...