>JAT. Are the relevant accounts local or domain accounts? If they're domain accounts the web server may be having a problem obtaining authentication.

They are local accounts.

>Also, I wonder why is it reporting 'asp_wp.exe could not be started'? If the web service was being used previously I'd expect it to be already running....

Yes, exactly.

>Given that it *is* starting: does the application create any database connections at startup. If so the problem *may* be with authentication for this rather than ASP (not sure of this tho)

No, database connection are created when needed.