Help! my 701 died!

[JACK SHU <JSHU@ecs.umass.edu>]

I hope someone can help me.  AFter spending over 10 hours on the phone
with IBM tech support, we got nowhere.
 
My 701 was running win95 fine till thursday when the hd crashed,
I lost everthing.  (I didn't panic, I had a backup of the entire drive
from the previous week).  so I formatted the drive and re-installed
windows 95, and tried to re-install the tape backup software so 
I could restore from tape.  
 
well this is where the trouble began,  I kept getting errors when I
tried to install the tape backup software, everything from GPF's to
error 426, to segment load failures.  after every error the system
would freeze and I  would need to turn the computer off and reboot.
 
I tried to install procomm plus for windows and the same thing happens.
I tried math cad, ms office 95, lotus smartsuit. all get errors during
(or actually when I start) the setup program.
 
strange thing is, if I setup direct cable connection and hook up the
thinkpad to my desktop, and get the CD-rom version of those software
packages, I can install from the CD-rom on the desktop without any
problems.
 
I thought there were something wrong with the diskettes so I tried them
on the desktop and they worked fine.
 
IBM blames it on Microsoft,  I called Microsoft and they said it was
some hardware problem with the thinkpad and that I should get it 
serviced, but ibm won't service it because they don't think there's
anything wrong with the thinkpad.
 
anyone experience this before? can anyone suggest a solution?!?
I'm desperate!
 
Thanks in advance for any help.
 
Jack