I tried your fix and lo and behold it did work. This is baffling to me. On another install/activation note I was installing XP Media Center edition that I downloaded directly from the MSDN site this past weekend. It would go through the normal install on disc one and then ask for disc 2. After going through disc 2 a bit it would ask me to install disc 2 again. The data it was looking for was on disc 1. Basically you have to put disc one back in after it asks for disc two. Nice job on the installer