That's all good. My tempdb is vastly larger than it will ever need to be. Set yours how best works for you. 🙂

There's really no right or wrong when it...

If you are using a single TempDB datafile then go with the autogrowth (also set the initial size at a size greater than you would expect it to grow to,...

It literally is to allow proportional fill. Being on a SAN my environment really is not disk constrained from a partition standpoint (a lot of checking went into that one),...

The big thing here is that you should not be enabling autogrowth on the tempdb files. Not only would this be a performance hit on growth, but you won't get...

What service account is SQL running under and does the SYSTEM account have permissions to access SQL?

Are remote connections enabled on the server (and do you have the named pipes...

SQL won't use the index if it deems that it would be more efficient to perform a table scan.

What does the query, the indexes on the table and the query...

Check and see if there is a duplicate entry within active directory for the physical server that you are running on.

You could also try renaming your server.

Crack open the proc and see what its up to. That's always fun to be fair 😀

That's clean enough, what about in the event log? Are there any LsaSrv entries in the system log?

Could you provide a list of the providers (drivers) installed on the server?

Anyone who says buggured up automatically get's my attention.

Curious as to whether there are any pointers in the event logs, or the SQL logs that might indicate some kind of...

That sounds like an Oracle forum question to me (o;

There are Oracle whitepapers out there which address how to do this, check out Oracles main site.

Does a TNSPING return the correct results when executed?

Have you attempted logging in using SQLPLUS to the Oracle database using the credentials that you are using for the linked server?

You can call it whatever you want, the information is stored within SQL as to what it is. It's just simpler to keep it that way for identification purposes (not...

If you have the money there's Quest too.