jpenn,
When I do this nothing happens. But when I do this to other application icons, the window pops up showing that I am running as the administrator.
I tried moving the file to another HDD....no luck. Thanks for the suggestions though.

Wes,
It appears that RAM is okay. In regards to the Network adapter, if it were defective, wouldn't I be experiencing other network related problems (i.e. limitied to no access to my other networked PCs and/or Media Vault)? I have access to all my networked systems.

FrankLP,

I think the time has finally come to call Sony on this. You obviously have some hardware/software configuration that 99% of us do not have.

This is the key, you said: "Also, I have found that I am experiencing the same problem with other recently downloaded executables."

It's not a Sony problem.

The network card could be corrupting your downloads. You could still be able to connect to other stuff. But I would expect you would also see the random error here and there when browsing websites or moving files around.

It could also be something bad on your motherboard itself. It really looks hardware related to me. I'm actually curious to see what it is since not knowing is bugging me. :-)

Few more suggestions. 1) Check your System and Application Event Logs for odd errors. 2) Uninstall all software that you installed any time just before or after you started seeing the problem. 3) Try praying and asking for forgiveness. (I'm not that religious, but hey, you never know.

Hahaha...I'll tell ya Wes, I've already tried asking for forgiveness from the "big guy" upstairs, but HE replied that I should probably contact Microsoft Tech Support!! LOL...anyway, I've heeded that recommendation, but am into two days waiting for a response to my last reply to them.

Being that the network cards are pretty cheap, I'll try replacing that in the next few days.

Does anyone think that upgrading the OS from XP Home to XP Pro would take care of anything that might be wrong? Or would I have to do a (gulp) total clean install if this is indeed a software/system issue?

FWIW, reminding that my personal skills & success at troubleshooting come from an undue amount of perseverance rather than being gifted in any way, shape or form.

1st off I would suggest that moving from XP home to XP pro probably wouldn't accomplish much because of the upgrade, but rather because you're reinstalling Windows, which often has to be done from time to time - in fact, hard & software support will often start off with re-install Windows as a first step with something like you're experiencing because the number of possibilities is just too large to deal with efficiently one by one.

If you wanted to move up to XP Pro, then I'd suggest going to Newegg.com, buying the OEM version, getting one that offers a free upgrade coupon to Vista. Overall price should be comparable, and other than meeting the deadline to order your Vista disc from MS, nothing says you have to install Vista right now.

That said, personally don't believe the problem is hardware -- could be, but generally that sort of problem will cause a crash or improper rather than no operation. Add/remove prog. problems with individual listings would point to the registry I think, but the applet being overall broken would not.

Could be problems caused by virus, rootkit etc., along with windows itself, & either of the 1st two can hide themselves from Windows & anti-virus software -- if you go ahead and reinstall Windows I'd suggest wiping the disk 1st before starting fresh. If you wanted to hedge your bets, back up the drive 1st so if a new windows install screwed up, could more easily put things back.

Also, before a windows re-install if you go that route, if your system came with xp home pre-installed, make sure you have an install disk in hand before doing any wiping.

My first thought is the same as Jedtv's download it to another computer then disc. Here's why I had similar issue with a download file contacted customer support folr them they asked if I had Norton AV (which I did at the time) theres whare my problem was even though i was disabling autoprotect etc. it was still blocking certian parts of the file(so small it was like bytes difference in file size) I had to actually shut down Norton both AV and their firewall completely AND prevent from coming on at startup. shut down/restart and redownload and it all worked fine.

needless to say ,but I dont normaly run Norton(dont like it for many more reasons), but it was preinstalled on the laptop I was using.
it has since been removed and replaced with my prefered AV software.

Do you know for certain it downloads fine, or are you just assuming that that is the case?

As a check, make sure that the checksum of the file is 137D - if it is anything else then something is going wrong with the download somehow.

Mark

The easiest way to rule out hardware would be just a fresh re-install of windows xp home. Be sure to reformat your disk when asked during setup.

That way you don't have to spend any money to find out if it is software or hardware related. You should probably do that first. Upgrading should make no difference.

Also, it could be your ADSL modem or whatever device you use to connect to the net. Try rebooting it and seeing if the problem repeats on other computers.