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Thanks! I ended up using snadboy. Turns out the password was my “default simple” password. My brain was too frazzled (this was at the end of a looong installation week) that I couldn’t come up with my default guess.

Nowadays, I don’t even bother to look. I just go to http://crucial.com[/url%5D and use whatever they recomend. Whether I buy it from there or not.

Do a remote desktop session and capture the CAD screens from the remote computer (or even a virtual PC session).

I can’t imagine that anyone could object to selling you an OEM copy of Windows XP when you buy a motherboard. I’ve done it many times, and never had an issue.

This is what mwave.com says:

Qualifying proof of purchase must be either a receipt for a complete personal computer or recent receipts showing the purchase of a mother board, hard drive, RAM and a CPU. The components can be on multiple receipts; not necessarily all on one receipt nor on the same receipt as the qualifying Windows XP/Office 2003 that you purchased. Shipping and handling charges are not included. See terms and conditions.

On their OEM Xp page: http://www.mwave.com/mwave/Skusearch.hmx?scriteria=AA15070%5B/url%5D

Can’t say about Office, though. For 2003, the answer was always “Students and Teachers Edition” (which was really open to anyone), but I don’t know if that deal will continue with O2007.

Thanks!

Looks like pretty much exactly what I want to do is in this article http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=617%5B/url%5D

As I suspected, the process is needlessly and teeth gratingly convoluted and over complicated.

Another thing you could do is just replace the Motherboard, CPU and Power supply and re-use all your other components. That would be cheaper still and you’ll get almost all of the benefit of a completely new box.

The only gotcha here is that some newer cpus require a newer psu with the 4-prong 12V connector.

Oh, I always miss the cool ones on “Giveaway of the Day.”

I should just make that a daily chore. Anything that would aleviate the “Windows needs to stall all your other applications for 5 -45 seconds (unless something crashesd) to perform a basic OS function,” annoyance would be loverly.

It used to be a lot more economical to build your own, but compared with lost-cost computers nowadays, it’s probably not a big difference.

The big advantages comes at upgrade time. If your computer doesn’t have enough Ram, just add more. Vista? New video card! You don’t have to do all the research and get out the credit card to purchase a whole new system. You know what your system is capable of, and what you need to upgrade to get more capability, because you designed and built it in the first place!

I would try places like Newegg.com and Mwave.com, they have user reviews that can be pretty illuminating. mwave also has forums.

One thing you may want to look into is if you purchase the motherboard and cpu at the same place, have them mount and test the cpu for you. Mwave, for example, charges $9 for this service, and it’s well worth it. (I speak from experience). Mounting a cpu on a motherboard is kind of like cutting your own hair. Sure you could do it yourself, but it’s probably better to pay an expert.

You could try and increase your timeout settings in your exchange server or outgoing firewall rule.

Some servers are set up to check all incoming connections and figure out if it’s likely to be spam. If it pass the “test”, the smtp conversation continues, if not, the connection is dropped (and would apear from your end as a time out). Sometimes, this process takes too long, and causes a timeout.

Have you tried a manual smtp connection using telnet? That will give you a good idea of where to connection problem occurs.

Thanks. I applied these changes and it seems to work for Internet Explorer, but Filezilla still seems to have issues, and I have to turn off passive mode to get a connection.

Ouch. I have 12 of these in custom built CAD workstations. I specced the P5B-Deluxe, but at the last minute, my vendor couldn’t get that board for some reason and substituted this board.

Uggh. This project has been just a constant stream of problems since mid-December

I like Agent Ransack – http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/%5B/url%5D

It’s fast, good on networks, and support regular expressions.

I’d just get mailing-list software and be done with it. This way, you can be confident that privacy and other mass-mailing problems can be delt with with a minimum of fuss and bother.

One big one, MajorDomo, is free. http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/%5B/url%5D

I just started playing with these. I have two for IDE drives and one for SATA. The one I have for IDE drives is basically an empty box, with a standard looking connectors inside, and a power brick and USB connector outside. There is also some strange pin connectors that connect to the outside dip switches. I am assuming that this is so you can switch Master/Salve/Cable Select modes without opening up the case.

One I have tried for SATA drives doesn’t work properly. I just get a “usb device unrecognized.”

Ubuntu Linux may be better for you. I’ve not had direct experience with it, but I hear it’s less off a hassle because they include less stuff. Such as 1 -GUI, one office suite, one media player, etc. Not the 4 or 5 different programs that the other distributions put out there.