Is there any secret to installing the software. Grinds on and on then gets hung up on some cymbal file. any help would be appreciated!

What are your computer specs?  What do you mean hung up on and what file specifically?

Gaacinc - the installer can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes to install depending on your system. The final files it installs are very large, which can sometimes make the installer appear to be ";hung"; at the end. It can be a bit misleading, but with patience it will complete. Usually this is while it is installing the three large .nks files. Did you happen to notice if all three of those were sucessfully installed during the process? If for some reason those files (the .nks files) DID successfully install, but there's a hangup elsewhere, let me know. If you have another machine that you can try running the installer on just to check, it might be a worthwhile test. Generally, patience will get you through the installation however.

Please let us know if there's any further info to report based on the above.

I'll retry the install and make notes of what happens.
System info: Pentium 4 CPU 1.60 GHz; 32 GB total disk space; 24.1 GB free; 1.61GHz 320 MB RAM; running XP home edition.
Thanks for your replies. We've tried on 3 pc's and haven't gotten it loaded yet. Is there a way to check the integrity of the CD we received?

Maybe an obvious point, but the disc is a DVD...

You are using a DVD player in your computer to install it correct?