In answer to your questions and with my additional questions:

1. SystemAdmin privledges under Site Settings > Security , can you tell me what I am looking for by having this access?

2. Can you tell how to connect to the reporting service through management studio? The report server is sql server 2008, however the data is either sql server 2008 or sql server 2012? Would this make some kind of a difference? If so, what would I check for?

3. I am the only one who has been using this particular report server and my application access the report server with vb.net 2010 web forms. I have 'stepped through the code' up until when the report server call is actually made. The report server connection is what I expect it to be.

4. Is there some kind of a setting on the test report server that can be wrong? If so, what should I look for?