P.3 1.0 - 512mb ram - 40gb hard drive.

Did a clean install of XP Pro retail version.  TRIED intalling SP.2 using disk supplied by M'soft and SP.2 instal started without problem, got error message "FILE corrupt", no indication of which file, and instal failed.  Tried installing from another SP.2 disk also supplied by M'soft.  Same result...

Changed to a second machine - P.4 1.6 - 256m Ram, 80g hard drive.  Clean install of XP Pro - no PROBLEMS - installed SP.2 using ONE of the disks mentioned above - no problems.

Changed the cd rw on the first machine - same error message.  Burned a copy of SP.2 & used the burned copy to try to install SP.2 - same error message.

Any ideas why SP.2 gives such a problem on one machine but not another?

Installed XP Pro & SP.2 on a third machine - no problems.

Re-formatted first machine with NTFS then Fat32 but SP.2 WOULD not install on either.  Also tried converting Fat32 to NTFS but SP.2 still dropped out.

Anything else I can try :-?

There must be a reason!! Problem gone but no explanation.

Took the problem to the supplier of the XP Pro disk, he laffed fit to bust until he tried to instal SP.2 after installing Pro from my disk.  He then immediately gave me another XP Pro disk which has installed and allowed SP.2 to instal without problem.  Seems something must have been wrong with the original XP disk but no message of what and why it installed perfectly on two other machines remains a mystery..

Thanks to all who read the post
Did it look like a real disk?Yes, I think it's called hologram(?).  Came in sealed packaging with code sticker etc...