Eight hours. Fifth Tech Support person. There seems to be magical thinking...&quot;if I just try this link instead&quot;. I mean the pointers point to the same executable.<p>My guess is that there&#x27;s a call to disk that doesn&#x27;t run through the appropriate API [or my computer is p&#x27;owned] based on some assumption that is almost always correct but not in this edge case. Windows reports correct free space on the install partition.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s because the Windows partion is on Disk 2 (the third disk).<p>Anyway, it&#x27;s probably approaching more than a dozen downloads of the installer today and I was able to take a small perverse pleasure in watching the tech open Windows Task Manager and see that everything in the startup tab was already disabled. Took the fifth tech to look, unfortunately.