thx carwalk. The "servers" are one in the same. From our dba's solution it should be obvious with hindsight that ssas can reach the engine. We've tried and already documented in this post just about everything you suggested. I dont know a lot about firewalls but suspect that since (and the way) our dba figured it out, that's not the problem. I think our network guys told us that wasnt the problem anyway. If i had the time i would go back and install on this vm the same version of the native provider that we know works on a different vm and try again. Unfortunately duty is calling me from other directions.