ODBC? Since you say the DSN worked. Not ideal, I know, but as a work around....

Try using the SQL OLE DB driver, instead of the SQL Native Access Client driver. I don't know how well the native client works to SQL 2000.

Nice to see another...

If all else fails, contact Microsoft PSS. They'll be able to read the stack dume and (hopefully) find the cause and a solution.

In 2005 it's better to use the dm views sys.dm_exec_sessions and sys.dm_exec_requests than sysprocesses. They're a lot better documented for starts

Thanks for the suggestion, yes, whenever I checked the queryplan from the QA, the remote query always showed 100% cost.

That's normal. Remote queries are intensive. what I meant by bad...

Possibly multiple calls to the remote data source, depending on the evecution plan.

No cardinality estimates available for the query optimiser, hence a large possibility of a bad plan.

There are probably...

Only way to do that is to create a new table, copy the data over, drop the old table, rename the new. Then make sure that you replace the constraints...

As Robert said, truncate is logged. It's known as a minimally logged transaction (or at least that's the term I've heard). If it wasn't logged then you wouldn't be able...

That works, the problem with it is that it prevents any index usage, if you have an index on f1 or f2.

Reason been it's seen as a function on a...

What specifically are you thinking of when you say 'non-logged transactions'?

As far as I know, in full recovery mode, all transactions are logged, and datbase mirroring only works in full...

No bulk update, and I would hazard a guess that it's not the logging that's slowing your proc down.

Is there any chance of getting someone to add an index? on...

Absolutely, yes. Cursors are massively inefficient.

Again this is untested, but I think it should do the same as the cursor. I'd be very interested in how long it runs.