Error 3910 - Transaction context in use by another session

Problem:
With autocommit OFF, distributed queries with joins or subselects
between tables on a development server and a linked production server
produce the following error:
Server: Msg 3910, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Transaction context in use by another session.

The queries run fine when
1. autocommit is turned ON, or
2. autocommit is OFF and the queries reference a copy of the
production database that is made to reside on the same development
server, i.e. the link to the production server is not exercised.

Software configuration:
Microsoft SQL Server 7.00 - 7.00.623 (Intel X86)
Nov 27 1998 22:20:07
Copyright (c) 1988-1998 Microsoft Corporation
Standard Edition on Windows NT 4.0 (Build 1381: Service Pack 6)

Where has Microsoft documented the requirement to set autocommit ON
when executing distributed queries involving linked servers? Or, is
this a known problem? If so, where is it documented?

Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Peter