>>For my own tests I simply switched to the local database. Though I was not able to add a user properly and had to use Windows Authentication for now.
>
>Could you define "local database"?

I have Windows XP with SQL Server installed on it. Originally web.config was referring to the server's database. I copied database to my local SQL Server, adjusted web.config and now I'm testing 'locally'.

Using test server and few developers was causing timeouts most of the time.