Yes, I've got workbench setup for server administration and development. Connecting fine added my user and granted permissions to it for the SQL server IP there which I used to create my ODBC connection on the MSSQL server which also tests successfully.

I read something suggesting PREFETCH having a bug or something, so I tried:

DRIVER={MySQL ODBC 5.1 Driver};SERVER=myservername;PORT=4309;DATABASE=mydatabasename; PREFETCH=0

Didn't seem to help.

Also tried executing this below. Catch never happens, test just spins and spins. Then like I mention, after a few hours of waiting for completion and giving up, I try to kill the SPID and it just sits in a running task state with command "KILLED/ROLLBACK"

begin try

exec sp_testlinkedserver N'linkedServerName'

end try

begin catch

select error_number() as errornumber

,error_severity() as errorseverity

,error_state() as errorstate

,error_line() as errorline

,error_message() as errormessage

end catch