The Login Packet Used to Open The Connection is Structurally Invalid. 17832 SQL Server

I set up an ODBC connection to SQL Server 2008 R2 running on an AWS instance and got this error in my SQL Server logs (the login on the client was more cryptic):

The Login Packet Used to Open The Connection is Structurally Invalid. 17832 SQL Server

I had Downloaded the SQL Server ODBC driver version 11.

This article led me down a wild goose chase setting token sizes and other things unrelated to my particular SQL Server login problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/169521

I was just about to try another driver version when I noticed there was a default driver in the AWS Windows 2008 instance I fired up (yes it has been a very long time since I installed MS ODBC for SQL Server - been using Java). And I had a former operations guy at my house geeking out with me who told me I needed to download the driver...so I will just blame him because it's convenient. Ha.

I set up the connection using the default ODBC driver that came in Windows 2008 and the problem magically went away. Connection successful.