EWA-Net refuses to install

Hi All,

After spending hours searching on the web your forum seems the closest thing to offering any kind of support/info about Mercedes' EWA/WIS stuff.

I bought the WIS DVD's from eManuals a few years ago and have had no trouble using it until now. In this period I had to re-install it once for some reason which I cannot now remember, but again, no problem. Now I recently had to replace my HDD and tried to re-install it... with complete failure

During the installation of module 7 off the first DVD (ewacore), a window pops up:
"Installation Manager
Individual installation failed
OK"

The DVD is labelled as "WIS_0408_1of2"
In 'version.txt' it says EWA version=1.7.59.29
I'm running XP SP3 on a desktop. This is what I've tried:

running as an administrator-
1 performed the vbs cleanup script in >ewa>tools followed by deleting left over files followed by a cleanup of registry entries using cc cleaner.
2 uninstalled recent versions of java & jre.
3 disabled all 'startups' and 'running services' in msconfig.
4 cleaned the DVD disc.
5 tried installing to a new 250GB partition.
6 enabled IE as default browser instead of Opera.
7 uninstalled SP3.

Install attempt after every step has resulted in the same "individual installation failed" at the same point. I am now completely at a loss of what to do I just cannot understand why this is happening especially after doing a successfull reinstall a year ago

Have I missed something obvious???