<p>The above error message comes up just before SQL Server marks the database as "Suspect" and refuses to open it. Does anyone know what the message means and how to fix it? I think it's a matter of grabbing the backup, but would be nice if it was possible to recover the data.</p>

<p>I've had a look at the <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306366" rel="nofollow noreferrer">kb article</a> but there are no transactions to resolve.</p>

It appears that it means your distributed transaction coordinator failed to start correctly when bringing the SQL Server online.
please refer to this
ASP.NET forum post
and
knowledge base article
Depending on the level of logging, you should be able to take the last known backup and slowly recover the logs using point in time recovery techniques to slowly bring the database up to the point right before failure began.