thank you all for your replies.

MSDTC is working fine when in the same domain.

Now I'm focussing on the VLANs to check if there are port issues. (I'm not a network...

- So, suppose you can intercept these runaways, what's going to be your criteria to kill a thread ?

- As always, performance is of _no_ concern, utill the server's light...

my 2 ct

you could also have your programmers use the commandtimeout property for a ado-command !

Don't let them use commandtimeout = 0 !  (endless) but have it limmited to an...

how about renaming the "old" log-file and then performing the sp_detach_db ?

Maybe this can help :

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/scripts/contributions/622.asp

Begin tran

select col1 from mytable (tablock)

-- et voila, it's locked

this thread can do anything with the table, others cannot !

commit tran -- ...

If it's only you who'll be doing the sql-stuff, and you want quick formatting, there is always this "office"-thing.

Query sqlserver using e.g. excel and you'll have all the fancy formatting-stuff...

syntax-wize you miss a couple of end-(case) statements ??

long shot but ...

you could advise to set up e.g. ca unicenter , netiq DiagnosticManager, Veritas indepth, ... to capture all the needed data and have your "outside-monitoring-staff" only work...

- First I would go for an extra sp_updatestats and dbcc UPDATEUSAGE (0)

- Do you also have a clustering index ?

- wich version of sqlserver are you using ?

-...

Great

by the way : http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Lagoon/9819/acronyms.html 

AFAIK = as far as I know

When you install sql7 there is a window for the charcterset/sort order/collation selection.

There are checkboxes to set case-insensitive,...

Check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/archive/default.asp?url=/archive/en-us/dnarsql7/html/sql7install.asp

Maybe this reply is a bit late

I'm using logparser to import print-event-logs to a sql-table.

Once imported, a transfer-script to the proper table is...

AFAIK in SQL7 this calls for a reinstall / rebuildmaster at least. 

_and_ recreate all userdb and import all data again  

I cannot help with PB

This reply was meanth to be supportive for you to get approval for the app-maintenance-effort.