A family of Microsoft relational database management systems designed for ease of use.
After recently running into this issue the solution i found was as follows:
After a server crash and subsequent db move to a new server, a cname record had been created for the old server and new share for the db created on a different server.
From this time on Win7 machines were fine accessing the dbase but XP failed with the connection interrupted message.
The clients were actually unable to access the UNC path based on the CNAME record, returning a message of duplicate name found... Turns out that XP and 2008R2 does not fully communicate perfectly without issues.... no surprises with the age difference.
The 2008 Server needed to have a few mods made to allow it to accept incoming connections based on the CNAME record, this fixed the network interruption issues on the XP clients, details here:
So yes in my case it was a communication issue but no it was not an issue with the network itself.... I know its not a fix for everyone here but it might help someone.