Could Not Find Standby In Sysservers. Run Sp_addlinkedserver To Add The Server To Sysservers

a different scenario leads to the same problem, the error message:
Could not find "Standby" in sysservers. Run "sp_addlinkedserver" to add the server to sysservers"

I browsed the thread for the same error message and the solution doesn't applies to me. Here is my system settings. we have a kind of backup system. a primary server is set up to copy the database files to a standby server. when the primary is off, the standby server will take over primary's name and ip. and our application runs on the standby as if in the primary. in both machine the odbc connection are set to point the primary server.

this setup works well in SQL server 2000 for both primary and standby servers, but it gives the error message on SQL 2005 in the standby server. I noticed that this is because the application opens an empty table. after inserting a record by hand, the error has gone away.

I know it doesn't make too much sense, but it 's what I observed. Could anyone give me some input how could this happens and what' s the solution?