with Windoze there's one hard and fast rule - apply the three R's
(retry, reboot, reinstall). You've exhausted 1 & 2 ...

It was the CHALLENGE which was doing it for me, to see if I could easily figure out what was wrong. But when the fourth or fifth R (restore, repair-install) wouldn't fix it or wouldn't run, the question became: Do you really want to have a vulnerable, ten year old OS working properly when you can get a better 'rush' from a brand new, infinitely better one whose resources aren't loaded down by a decade-worth of security fixes?

RIGHT-ON SARAH!