the problem is the thickness in this area of the basement I need as much space as possible. I need to frame for outlets and such...that costs me 4" on each side of the room right there. I can use fg in there for R value. 1.5" XPS plus the framing is to big...I can put 1/2" to 1" of something in back of the framing and 1" is even tight. Cost is a secondary but important issue. I am just looking for some mold protection..I'l like to use whatever is least expensive and least thick...not worried about R value...sound like 1/2" XPS or EPS won't provide that protection so I either squeeze in the 1" or skip it all together....wonder what the mold chances are along those two walls...one abutting the garage and the other the sun room...?

certain versions of windows 7 have the ability to run xp with in 7 in a virtual mode so that you can then run your old programs that way. The best suggestion is to try to communicate with the programs creators to see if there is a version or an update that will make it compatible many do have an update. If you have windows 7 home premium it does not have that xp function but you still can run a virtual machine set up with in windows 7 and run your programs that way. You would need to read up and understand how to set up and run a virtual machine, there are some free versions available. Make older programs run in this version of Windows Windows XP Mode Windows XP Mode Learn to Use Windows 7's Compatibility Mode with Older Apps there are a few links you may want to check out.

Thanks, Ravencajun. Before I saw those careful instructions, my daughter's PC was prompting to install SP3 - so I did (about a week ago). At first I thought we got lucky and all went well. She has so little on her computer that I thought it was a good place to start. However, now she's getting flickering - if that's the right word for it. For instance, she's looking at her inbox in gmail - and it keeps scrolling over and over so she isn't able to click on one email and open it. It's also scrolling too quickly to hit the sign out button. Ultimately I hit alt-cont-delete to end gmail. I believe we saw this flickering in another program the other day - it seems that little green boxes were flashing at points along the screen. I realize this may have nothing to do with SP3. So I should probably mention, she has a dell dimension 4500 - 40GB hard drive, 768 MB Ram, Firefox browser. It's possible all the trouble has come within the Firefox browser - I'm not sure. Anything else that might need fixing or updating that could cause this. Thanks. Lynn.

Thanks, folks, I'll pass these suggestions on to her. She lives more than 100 miles from the nearest "computer shop" and is trying to fix the problem with her nephew's help. It has them both stumped. Yes, ever since she installed Microsoft.NET framework 2.0, service pack 2 security update for Windows Vista Service pack she can no longer search for anything (using any search engineÂGoogle, Yahoo, Mozilla). An index page will come up but none of the links/sites will open. She canÂt X-out of that screen. She has to hit Alt/ctl/delete and restart task manager; the whole system closes down and she has to log back on. She can open her bookmarks, but canÂt go anywhere from them. She has a Compaq Presario computer. Windows Vista home basic. She has run McAfeeÂs virtual technician and security scans. They said everything was fine. It isnÂt. She has shut down and restarted her computer several times. Nothing seems to work.