Continuing education is generally viewed as a viable method to maintain certification. Microsoft should already have much of the infrastructure required to support that model, rather than requiring repeated testing.

For SQL Server 2000

Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000 by Itzik Ben-Gan and Tom Moreau, PhD

Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming by Robert Vieira

the 2005 version of his book is late

For...

I did suddenly have this problem with my Win2K workstation.

FIX: Connection to SQL Server Database Using IP Address Is Unusually Slow (Q300420)

Since I was already running SP 2 already...

Thanks for responding.

Removing the dll from the registry and then re-registering it was actually one of the first things I tried..