I ordered the new box on Friday and picked it up yesterday. Were it not for a rather serious problem, I'd have been up and running much sooner. I wasted a lot of time yesterday. I should restate the problem here so that Google-bots will catch some of the text and prevent someone else from going half crazy.
I got an Asus P5K motherboard. I also got a fresh copy of Vista loaded onto the computer's new drive. I got through the 35 important updates from Microsoft Update and got many other peripherals sorted out. When I re-ran Update it showed a new driver for the onboard LAN card among others. I let it rip. Then, Vista would not load. It snagged on the opening screen with the little 'loading line' indicating no progress. I deftly went to the ASUS site and downloaded the newest drivers from the Attansic L1 Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Controller. I tried and tried by couldn't get the driver loaded without it seemingly hanging the system again. I was at my wit's end and about ready to run to purchase a network adapter card that would fit in a free slot. At last, I decided to check on the Internet.
It seems the driver on Windows Update somehow messed things up. Rebooting the machine didn't clear the board enough to allow for the installation of the correct drivers.
Do you know what the fix included? I simply had to unplug the computer from the outlet for 30 seconds! I've been playing with Intel PCs since the mid-'80s and this isn't the first time that completely turning off the computer has fixed things, I guess. Damn.
I'm running fine now with a four-core processors humming on the Q6600 chip! Time to use some 64-bit applications ...