TheFlash428

Sorry, misunderstood question--offically removing post.

I know the settings for this are under the "User Accounts" setting in the control panel--although I'm not sure specifically what options need to be selected.

You can create an administrative installation. It will ask for this information only once. Be sure to adhere to your license agreement.

I would take Iceman's advice. One other thing that never seems to work but is always worth a try: Detect and repair or Check for updates (assuming you still have access to your install point). I don't know of any known bugs that would cause this problem though. Do you have a similar problem with any other apps? (i.e. selecting text in a word doc). Or is it just in Excel? If your mouse/touchpad only behaves this way while working in Excel, it may just be an application bug.

The default location for PST files is "C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook" (this is a hidden folder). If you are not connected to an exchange server, chances are your mail saved here, assuming you are using Windows 2K/XP. the default file is "Outlook.pst". This PST file can be imported into the profile on your new hard drive using the "Import/Export" option in Outlook, or added as a separate data file. You could also do a "*.pst" search on your old drives files to see if the PST file was saved to an alternate location. As far as completely loading the previous configuration, I personally don't know of anyway to get that to work. I'm pretty sure you will at least have to set up the profile manually, but most of the information (messages/calendar/contacts/etc) should be saved in the PST file.

It is possible. I am not sure what type of account it is (exchange, POP, etc...), but I do know that offline storage files (.ost) for example, don't like to be migrated from machine to machine--even if they are being used on the same profile. It sounds like there were existing local settings that may not have transferred to the new machine. What would I do? make sure the Outlook profile in question is backed up to a .pst file (if that isn't the default delivery location already--if so, note the location of that file). Delete the profile from the "mail" option under the control panel, and re-build the mail profile. Once that it done, you can import the messages (calendar/contacts/etc) from the previous PST into the new profile. As I first mentioned, this process is dependant on what type of mail account this is, but I hope it helps.

Yes, this is true--all of our Dells use SATA drives and the XP CD's that come with them have the drivers pre-loaded.

Another big thing I think that has not been mentioned is customization. With Dell (and others), the consumer line is very open to customization. When you place an order you can specify and upgrade each component to get the computer you are looking for, the actual model of computer seems to serve as not much more than a guide. I have found that with the business line however, you pretty much buy the model that has the specifications you are looking for and get bulk quantities of identical machines. In my opinion though, a cheap system is a cheap system. If a company is that concerned about spending money, they should realize that they are doomed to work at slow computers that will probably be obsolete with in a period time to short to offset the cost savings. Just my own opinion.

It has been a while since I worked with Office 2K, as I now administer Office 2k3. With office 2003, it is possible to set up the applications to actually run from an administrative installation on a network share instead of from the local hard drive. I have never used this configuration, but it sounds like that may be is happening to you. While you are on the LAN the apps run fine because they are actually running from the network server, so when disconnected you no have access to the applications. I apologize if I am way off here, as I said, I have never actually used this configuration.

From my experience this is correct. It will auto lookup names from your global address list (if you are using an exchange server) if you know the alias, but I have not been able to populate autocomplete fields to recipients but any other means than by actually sending them an email.

The only way I know to resolve the problem is to create a new PST file in Outlook 2003. When you do so, select "Outlook 1997-2002 personal folders" option, and then import the data from the previous PST file into the new one you just created. You will get a compatibility warning, but the newly imported file should open in older versions.

Never tried...I imagine if you decompressed the ISO, that you could possibly(?) load that way. Using Image drive software would not work, as I am pretty sure during the reboot the image would not reload.

There is a registry tweak to disable the firewall. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\StandardProfile] "EnableFirewall"=dword:00000000 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\DomainProfile] "EnableFirewall"=dword:00000000