HanShi (7/17/2013)
It sounds to me you have a "double-hop" issue at hand. Most of the time it's related to KERBEROS authentication and Active Directory. Your credentials are passed on from the first machine (desktop) to the server. But it won't be passed on from the server to the next.Take a look at these links to help you
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189580(v=sql.105).aspx
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/sqlsandwiches/2011/06/20/double-hop-of-doom/
That's actually the same conclusion I reached. Oddly enough, I had to search for the error message itself - which seems pretty damn generic - before finding any posts with the same issue and bringing up the double-hop problem.
Unfortunately it doesn't look like I'll be able to fix the issue if it's going to require IT to make any Active Directory changes, which from doing a brief reading of most of the articles seems to be the case.
The only other solution - and I'm not sure it would work - would be for the D server to create an SQL Server login, instead of a NT Login, that we could use to connect - and simply require that any connections via that linked server use those credentials. However, I'm not even sure if I can get them to do that.