>>I can only repeat my initial advice - if everything fails, try adding Index expression into the query. E.g. add Index hint.
>
>I am not sure what you mean by that. Would you have a small example so I can have a better idea of what it is.

I have this query

....
left outer join dbo.accounts a on a.acct_name = t.acct_name
			left outer join dbo.transact r WITH (index = sale_no) on r.sale_no = t.sale_no

Note the WITH (index = nameOfTheIndex)

clause.