Question. Are you using CD drives, or combo DVDCD drives in the install attempts? The reason I ask is that combo drives, particularly if they are the first ones or the current bargain bin items, have firmware issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with the CD or the OS. It's on the ROM inside the drive itself, and very, very few of them permit you to update your firmware. One of E-on's anti-piracy methods involves the installer, and post install stabilization (this is so people who rip a CD image mess up, and get what seems to be a very nice image...only it crashes constantly with memory errors), and it is rather sensitive of media drives that are older, or not up to a certain standard. If this is the case, try the install through a standard CR reader, or a CDRW drive. And the point about the AV software also includes the built in pseudo-firewall that XP ships with. As for that cyclic redundancy error, if you are comfortable doing so, run regedit and delete every key you find in there regarding Vue. Doing an install over a partial install can have some odd effects, and that is one of them. As for the administator priveleges. Have you checked your system for any 'gifts' from the net? Changing the priveleges flag without changing the status display is an old script kiddie trick, and if the machines are on the same network, they could all have been infected. Plus the fact is that XP Home is not as robust as Pro is....and certainly not as robust as Win2k Pro. If this was an upgrade install over an older OS, then it is possible that XP is being finicky. For my money, though, I would bet on the actual issue being in the drives themselves. Those CD's get made by lot, and if there was a bad lot, there would have been a replacement from outside that lot number.