Power BI refresh error “could not load file or assembly…provided impersonation level is invalid”

Short version

Run Power BI Desktop as administrator before opening the report.

Explanation/Scenario

Recently, when opening a report from Power BI Report Server that used a SQL database as a data source I received the following error.

An error happened while reading data from the provider: ‘Could not load file or assembly ‘System.EnterpriseServices, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a’ or one of its dependencies. Either a required impersonation level was not provided, or the provided impersonation level is invalid. (Exception from HRESULT: 0X80070542)’

So I clicked “Edit Queries” to see what was going on and received almost the same error but referencing a specific table and getting me thinking about SQL specifically.

Error seen after clicking “Edit Queries”

So I checked that table in the query editor and received yet again the same error.

Error seen after clicking the specific table referenced in the previous error message

Simple solution. It’s likely that your credentials and queries are just fine.

The solution for my particular issue here, and the meaning behind the “impersonation level” part of the error, is just that you need to run Power BI Desktop as administrator before accessing the report. After opening the report in Power BI Desktop being ran as an administrator, everything worked as expected.