OK, I have already ripped most of my hair out and I DID get it to work with many hours of research and many smart people at the helm online and at my client’s work. This article will save your HOURS I hope. The permissions thing was credit to them. Thanks.

[UPDATE: Feb 2014 – I now used a linked Server to a dB with a password (the with a password is a big deal – googling for a long time finally paid off – whoo hoo it works! See that article too – you will still need this one]

Here are some links I used to get things working. I use the OPENROWSET (see SQL example below) and there are 4 things that are key (this guy saved my bacon so I will link this to give him the most credit). If you have 32 bit office installed on a 64 bit machine etc Continue reading →

This paragraph was written long after the issue was solved. I think the black screen was a 2ndary monitor’s view (but we didn’t have a 2ndary monitor). So – first, ensure you have ONLY a digital cable going from your computer to the monitor OR an analog – not both (first things first). Then, if this does not solve it, hold down the WindowsButtton-P and press the down arrow – does something happen? Is it set to the TOP option of Primary Screen? If a pull-out out showed up change it to Primary Screen (top option) So doing a restore point to before the issue will NOT solve it because updates will overwrite this (plus this was too long ago to do a restore point). Another thing that will solidify this (since an update triggered all of this) is to uninstalling the graphics driver AND all the monitors in your Device Manager (not just disable) and doing a reboot (which will reinstall with the latest drivers) seem to solved it for good. I posted here to so you can read this in context.

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