I finally cleaned all the crap out of it including removing unused registry entries. Then I installed Vista Ultimate Upgrade so that I can get onto corporate LANs. The fan's a lot quieter on this one and so far, it's only doing one funny thing: my WAN is showing as disconnected in the taskbar (has an X through it) but it's running just fine.

House of the Rising Sone
Out in the mid or far field
Dedicated mid-woofers are over-rated