So, I figured, hell. Let me try out winderz 7. I figured, meh, I've done plenty of in-place winderz installs and upgrades, no need for a backup...
So, I tried out the upgrade on my netbook. No dice. No Winderz XP to Winderz 7. Fine. Let me do the in-place install. No dice. Some error during the restart phase after starting services.
Now, I moved the winderz directories to a off-name (backup and backup.000)... Let me see if it does it now. Everything I've seen is "bad burn" or "bad download". I know it's neither due to
a) This is the Volume License, and we've used this disk image a lot.
b) It's on a USB disk, not a DVD...
This is going to be a long night.