Use

set statistics io on

set statistics time on

while running the SP. Also you can see the execution plan of both of the statements to see if there is any difference.

First 2 statements will be like this. FOr the third.. you have to give more info.

select * into Test from [server].[database].[scheme].MainTable

select col1 into Test1 from Test

Yes. You can achieve this in one go.

Looks like a connection issue between SQL Server & the drive that holds the log file. SQL server can not access the log file and it looks like the drive...

You can leave it as is but increase PARTNER TIMEOUT.

You can create more accounts afterwords and assign sysadmin role to them.

But SQL Server administrators is SQL Server administrators you can not have reduced privilege on that. For that know...

Installed or running?

Check this out. This may help you.

http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/kimberly/8-steps-to-better-transaction-log-throughput/

No. Named constrains will cause problem only when they are either altered or deleted at publisher.

Here.

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/john_paul_cook/archive/2011/10/30/superscripts-subscripts-special-characters-and-unicode.aspx

Any other error message?

Check this article. it might help.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chrissk/archive/2009/05/25/transactional-replication-conversations.aspx

Just observed one more thing. your default in not named. Always create named defaults if you are using replication. It creates issue if you drop or alter defaults.

You are doing it in perfectly right way. You do not have to drop the whole subscription.

If you make Schema changes to Publisher they are propagated to Subscriber by default, unless set otherwise while creating replication.

So as you said, you can wait if it resolves the...

Could you post the execution plan, from both application query and query from Query analyzer.