Thanks Bill, I'll check it out. :)

I don't want to jinx ourselves, but right now it seems that we have finally had success. We tried transferring the photos on Zip disks instead of CDs and so far it seems that everything goes well, no crashes. (Knock on wood!!)
So either it was what RHaseltine mentioned (thanks, Richard!) or maybe there was something wrong with the CDs. Though we didn't have problem with them on the laptop... We haven't done the change in the BIOS yet because hubby is concerned about the warranty with Dell. I don't know if he's right or it wouldn't matter if we changed things in there as far as the warranty is concerned?

But anyway, right now it seems that the Zip disk tranfer works much better. Thank you everybody for all the help! :)