>>You shouldn't expect me to check this extensively but this took my attention:
>>
>>ConvertMemoToPDF - a time consuming, and highly probable, an unnecessary operation.
>>Cetin
>
>ConvertMemoToPDF is time consuming, I agree. We can not remove it, though, because we're not keeping Client Notes in Memo fields, but store them in PDF on the Network drive. But even after I commented out this call, it still took more than 1 hour. I believe the log results I posted were with ConvertMemoToPDF commented out.

OK, it's your problem and even if that takes 0 seconds storing thousands of pdf to disk by itself is time consuming. Maybe it'd be much better if you upsize to sql server.
Cetin