I agreed Tom made right direction. Try to disable auto-close to see how the performance improves.

Memory seems not the issue. What about CPU usage and which processes consume the CPU?

Use Windows Task Manager to check how CPU performs and how much memory being used And Which processes take most resources. The performance degrade may not be caused by SQL...

No idea why default is 10%. By decreasing to 5%, Database performance may be impacted during database growth that involves slow I/O activities more frequently.  

I don't know. Steven may have better answers to CR/LF. I try to

familiarize this new Forum too.

What is your question?

If the database was detached Properly, You can attach it without LDF.

Check the security policy from administrator tools.

As production DBA, He/She also has to be good in NT/2000 servers administration too.

It can be both, For details, See http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.asp

The questions you are looking for are depending on what type of DBA you are looking for, Developement DBA, production DBA or on both side?

For Development DBA, I would focus...

Does the table have text/image columns?

Can you post result of sp_spaceused @updateusage = true here?

I would suggest BCP.

1. Backup the database

2. Count data records with "select count(*) from YourTable"

3. Export the data records using the command line utility bcp.exe. for example, with "bcp PRD..YourTable out c:\outputfile.out...

Is the customers your internal users? If yes, you don't have to remove the tools as you have enterprise license. If not, you still can distribute MSDE with your application...

sp_who2 active will tell those active spids. DBCC opentran will show the Oldest active transaction that might still running.