I forgot to mention something:

If you have more than one record that matches the criteria specified in the WHERE clause, the resultset contains more than one record. Each with the value "1" in the only column.

You might also consider ...

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table WHERE field=99

This statement should be running fine on all servers. You'll have to change your code to check for the result of count rather than checking for the existance of a record in the resultset. This might be slightly faster than my other suggestion.

Armin