SQL Job Failure

[techqueries]

We have been facing issues with one of the SQL job which is running in SQL Server 2005 SP3 installed in Windows 2003 server.

The errors seen in the job history are as follows.

Sql Severity 16
Sql Message ID 16389
Operator Emailed

TCP Provider: The semaphore timeout period has expired. [SQLSTATE 08S01] (Error 121) Communication link failure [SQLSTATE 08S01] (Error 121). The step failed.

TCP Provider: The specified network name is no longer available. [SQLSTATE 08S01] (Error 64) Communication link failure [SQLSTATE 08S01] (Error 64). The step failed.

On investigation we found that the SQL Agent went down for a second and that was the reason for this job to fail. But could not digest, how can the SQL Agent loose connection with the DB installed in the same box and same instance. If there was an actual network connection it is still understandable.

Once this job fails continuously , if we restart the SQL service, the job runs without any failure.

Any help on this issue is much appreciated..

Thanks,
Samjad