DTC restart shutdown SQL server, why?

SQL 2000 SP4 standard on Windows 2003 Enterprise.

On Friday our DTC service restarted on a couple of servers (we think cause of a config change made by the network guys) but on one server it also shutdown the sql server... We cannot find anything that indicates why. I have looked and cannot find any reason why SQL would be a require DTC to be running expecially since none of the other servers shut down.

The only difference in this one server as compared to the others is it is a publisher for merge replication and the other servers are either a subscriber or publisher of transactional. Would this have anything to do with it?

Also is SQL actually dependant on DTC for any reason that would cause it to be shutdown when DTC is restarted?

A down MSDTC shouldn't cause your sqlserver to stop running. There must be something else in the loop. What can you find in sql logs (i.e. errorlog.*).