Look, Tony, for what it is worth, why not have Don make a 'disk image' of his entire HD, wipe and reformat your HD, and install Don's data?

Just how many times HAVE you done a complete reformat and reload? Not just the OS, but EVERYTHING, data and all. Couldn't hurt, could it? Or maybe a different HD altogether? Maybe you got an HD lemon? At this point, with SOME people having playable Audya's, and some not, I wouldn't hold my breath for a magic bullet OS upgrade. But I wouldn't bet against a bad batch of HD's, or RAM chips, or any of the plethora of off the shelf computer components that you COULD try changing out.

Have you compared arranger serial numbers, motherboard serial #'s, HD model #'s, RAM types, or any of those other issues which I hope you don't come back and suggest only a fool would take a look at...