Problem SOLVED!!!
I thought about the disk possibly being bad (BTW, ALL my disks are originals!), and so I tried installing the game on another computer. This other machine is inferior in many respects to the "main" one (onboard video, onboard sound, 500MB RAM, 120GB HD), but EVERYTHING WORKED!!!
Next I had to try to find out WHY!!! Since the two computers are networked, I brought up the "Painkiller" folder from each installation on the screen, side by side. I compared the contents of each folder, and after careful analysis discovered that on the "main" computer there were several files missing, among them a 500 MB texture file, as well as several COMPLETE subfolders...
I STILL have no idea why these files and folders did not install on the original computer but DID on the other one. It's POSSIBLE but not very likely that the lenses in BOTH CD Drives were dirty. And I have installed OTHER games SINCE with no problems... Also, as I said earlier, I uninstalled the complete game from the first computer and then installed it again on a different hard drive, and there was LOTS of free space left over - in fact, I could install the game MANY TIMES over and still have space left!!!
Anyway, I copied the "Painkiller" folder from the second computer to the first one, put the required CD in the drive, and fired up the game, and IT WORKED!!! THAT was the problem! The missing files!!!
Go figure!!! COMPUTERS!!!
Evil_pikatchu, sorry to have hi-jacked your thread like I did, but I gave a little thought to YOUR problem. Check your Painkiller folder. Minus the save games, there should be (at least in MY case) 511 files in 21 folders, for a total of 3.24 GB. If yours is significantly different, you might want to try something like I did. Maybe it will help!
