very curious, indeed. i'd have to 2nd U2Lynne's questions - programs not downloading at all, or not installing, or something else?

also, if worse comes to worse, you could always either have a dual-boot system, or get a program like VirtualPC that'll run any OS off your system's RAM (as i understand it)... that could be beneficial as a temporary "fix" if you can't get the issue sorted for a bit.