Update: I spent $500 for a 5 year old 1 tB hard drive tower with windows 10 pro on it.

I spent $150 for a piece of shit tower for my offline computer. Literally the cheapest tower in the shop. Windows 10 pro running on it.

Got it all working without any headaches.

I battled with Ubuntu on a  laptop and an external drive for hours upon hours and never got it working.

Hope this helps others.

Suggestion: a pinned comment should reccommend Windows and not Ubuntu for non-techies.

The transaction actually went through and it was the time out message that was an error.   So all is well. Thank you for your help.

Rest of the message says
"the RPC interface of your node is disabled, therefor Armory cannot use it to gather more information, about the timeout.  It is recommended that you enable the RPC and try again."

In case it is relevant I changed the "change address" type to auto as per the previous error message.

any ideas?

Windows 10 pro.

Alright I will give it another shot.  I tried ubuntu last time.  I will push forward on both fronts. I will do a windows and Ubuntu and see if either can get going for me.

Should I use bitcoin core 22 or 23?

And yes, I mis-spoke about wallet.dat.   I meant to say I still have my offline armory computer.

I have paper backups and an encrypted wallet.dat file that I know the password to.   

I just cant get the client going to save my life.

Willing to pay a telegram buddy to walk me through buying the right type of machine, setting up, etc.   I have tried several times over the last 12 months and cant get it.

I have a little experience with linux.  I can pull up a terminal, navigate around directories, and copy commands out, but that is about it.
I have not used a windows machine for over 10 years either though.   I am a mac guy.

I dont really care which one i use, but another thread suggested ubuntu 18 is the easiest.  I have an ubuntu machine here as a result of that thread (my second), so I will give it a go.

I can fire up bitcoin qt and get the check mark.

I get some problems with Armory though.   How can I get the error log?  Where do I find it?

Any hints on anything?  Dell?  no dell?  anything to narrow it down?

My last 2 attempts to get Armory working have failed.  So I am starting off on the right foot this time....  Can anyone provide a link for store bought laptop with an ubuntu 18 machine(assuming that is still what is recommended) that they themselves have got working please?

Thanks in advance.