ColdFusion MX 6 query returns (instantly) blank error at the cfquery level when more than ~50 records are returned from an MSSQL source

Question

Very interesting issue we've run into with a scheduled task that has been failing. Here is a screenshot with verbose exceptions enabled (using a brand new test datasource with no special advanced settings):

here is an image: https://i.stack.imgur.com/puKEd.png

Example of the query:

select e.firstname,e.lastname,e.department,e.salesnumber
from employees e

Couple notes:

1. The datasource validates in the CFAdmin (and we've also rebuilt it using the FQDN and IP to no avail).
2. We're able to log in with the same user/pass directly in SSMS and run the query which returns about 18,000 rows.
3. The error is returned INSTANTLY which is completely atypical of any general timeout error I've run into.

If we slightly modify the query to include something like TOP:

select TOP 20 e.firstname,e.lastname,e.department,e.salesnumber
from employees e

The query runs with absolutely no issue. I've been able to use another table in another database on the database server that is normally used for this web server and have no problems with larger recordcounts. They take a while to process, which is normal, while this query returns this immediately if we ask for more than about 50 records. Between about 50-70 it alternates between throwing this error or actually running and timing out/crashing Jrun, requiring a service restart.

We've even changed the query into a stored procedure and used and to call it, assuming that may ColdFusion was having problem interpreting the query in-line but that still returns the same results. The most confusing part is that this error is received so quickly (the query even has time to run) depending on the number of results we ask it for.