I was going to help out with the upcoming challenge but now I don't know.
This has truely been a black Friday.
It all started last Monday when I thought I would try some of the Cuda WUs. I used one machine, downloaded a bunch and promptly trashed all of them. I went to the Primegrid message boards but didn't see anything about this. I then did a fresh install of XP, latest drivers and Boinc. It trashed them again. After several messages it was revealed that you need .NET 3.5 or newer.
Today when I got to work I promptly downloaded the .Net file and burned it to a CD. I put the cd into the machine and started the installation only to have it fail. It said that I need SP2 or above for XP. I leave the automatic updates off so I clicked the update button. That is when it told me there are no updates for that machine.
That led me to the Microsoft website where I discovered that all support for XP SP2 and older has ceased. So I promptly downloaded SP3.
When I tried to install it I was told that I need to install SP2 first. Went back to MS and eventually found the complete (266mb) SP2 file. Downloaded and burned to CD. When I tried to install it I was told that my Volume License Key was invalid and it could not install. Next came a quick call to Microsoft where I was told we only support SP3. When I explained that I was trying to get to SP3, I was told we only support SP3. What a wasted call.
Next I broke out my Dotsch cds thinking I could run the challenge in Live CD mode. The 64 bit wouldn't boot and the 32 bit errored out after selecting Live cd mode.
Its been one of those days.