I've been scratching my head for quite a few hours over this issue and thought It might be useful if 
I share my answer.

Turns out if you are using a stored procedure to delete items from the GridView which updates 
multiple tables or fires triggers this will effect the @@ROWCOUNT value which seems to trip up the 
rendering of the GridView when deleting the last item.

The fix I settled on was to place a SET NOCOUNT ON at the start of your stored procedure and a SET 
NOCOUNT OFF at the end.

Regards


MC