snafumaster

First question, did you get these updates from "Microsoft Updates", "Windows Udates" or "Office Updates". If you got them from "Office Updates", you may want to try going back to office updates and try to download the updates that do not require the cd. It should ask you this as an option. You may have to clear your tempory internet files, cache, etc. *edit to add... In a pinch, if you can't get it working quickly enough, I would try http://www.openoffice.org/. It's a free suite, fully funtional. I personally have not used it, but I do have a lot of skilled tech type friends that sware by it. I personnly have no need as I have a 03 myself.

This entire topic reminds me of a guy I went to high school with and he swore that if he bought a 4 cyl. Mustang and upgraded it to an 8 cyl., it would be faster than one built with an 8 cyl stock. His reasoning was that it was lighter weight because of the extra support they put in the 8 cyl models. The thing is that they do sit on the same frame and when you change one to be like the other...well you end up with much the same product...less what you didn't change. Guess I'm just old school, but I run XP pro(for my desktop) fully updated and have NEVER experienced a crash and my install is 3 years old. Also the performance is great. I run...wait for it...wait for it...03 server for my domain controller and another as my webserver and experience much the same reliability and performance. I do use tweak03 so I can have my pretty icons and such. That is more of a lazy thing as you can get all those tweaks by using regedit.

A cheap 4 port switch would solve your problem as well. I bought a used one that has 8 ports from an online sale for 15 bucks. I use that to connect 1 server, 4 desktops and with a wireless access point two more laptops to the internet simultaniously(yes, I have addiction issues)

before I did anything, I would find my istallation cd, insert it into my cd drive and then click the start button, select run and type sfc /scannow from microsoft, http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...r.mspx?mfr=true

Look at your control panel. You should see an Intel Graphics icon. Open it and select display. On mine it give you the options to display in any 90 degree orientation. Not sure yours will be the same as mine is the 82852 chipset. But yours is a better chipset so it should have some options like mine.

This may seem overly simplistic but you may want to try if you haven't; in explorer tools-folder options-view tab-reset all folders The other thing that I have used in case where I was getting odd icon issues is purposely associating the file type with another program and setting the view to icon. This will force it to change. After you see the change, set it back to the association you wanted and the thumbnail view as well. Kind of jump starts it. Not guarenteed, but simple and worth a shot.

My video card and it's software support rotation by default. However there are third party programs for this as well. The one we use at work is very good. We use it so we can mount 61" plasma screens vertically. Nice interface. It's called pivot. Here's a link http://personalcomputing.portrait.com/us/p...p_overview.html

Here is the link from Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=289022 But basically you want [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect This is for a standard install