login failed in initializing the provider

I've maintained an environment of SQL servers in multiple domains. I used to be able to get things to work without a domain trust, but with newer versions (of SQL, or the underlying OS, or both -- I never got a solid answer) I haven't been able to make it work.

Back in the 2000/2003/2008 era, I was able to use Windows authentication to use an account from Domain A to connect to a SQL instance in Domain B, even with no domain trust in place, as long as the username and password were the same in both domains.

Somewhere along the way, that stopped working. Even if the usernames and password matched, authentication would fail. We ended up having to revamp a lot of our architecture so that we could get the SQL instances in the same domain as the clients applications.

Bottom line: Windows authentication between untrusted domains is not going to work. You'll need to do one of these things instead:

• Get them in the same domain
• Establish a domain trust
• Use SQL authentication