Merge replication and spids left behind

We are using Merge replication with clients from remote offices (SQL
2000, sp3). Recently, I have had a problem with users who are
replicating, and they shut down their laptops. The connection never
dies, and I end up with major blocking issues related to the
"orphaned" spid. The tables that are blocked are used to filter data
on each client. Since the orphaned spid is blocking, backups will run
forever, and have to be killed, and a SQL management job that
inserts/updates data in these tables has to be killed.

If I kill the spid, it shows a rollback at 0% and the status never
changes. The user has disconnected, and there is really nothing to
roll back. How can I get rid of this spid with out restarting SQL
server, or rebooting my server?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Amy Mamarshall@.rhtc.net (Amy M) wrote in message news:<119d3885.0408101552.7fe7cd72@.posting.google.com>...
> We are using Merge replication with clients from remote offices (SQL
> 2000, sp3). Recently, I have had a problem with users who are
> replicating, and they shut down their laptops. The connection never
> dies, and I end up with major blocking issues related to the
> "orphaned" spid. The tables that are blocked are used to filter data
> on each client. Since the orphaned spid is blocking, backups will run
> forever, and have to be killed, and a SQL management job that
> inserts/updates data in these tables has to be killed.
> If I kill the spid, it shows a rollback at 0% and the status never
> changes. The user has disconnected, and there is really nothing to
> roll back. How can I get rid of this spid with out restarting SQL
> server, or rebooting my server?
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> Thanks,
> Amy M

This KB article might be useful:

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...kb;en-us;818552

If this doesn't help, you may want to post in
microsoft.public.sqlserver.replication, as your problem seems to be
quite specific.

Simon