Went to BestBuy and replaced the DVD. Thankfully they had no problem with that. (Traffic was less forgiving. 20mph in a 25? 30 in a 45? Seriously?)
Anyway, the new disk failed as well, with BSOD rather than previous issues. After a BIOS update from HP, I am now back to the original issue.
I will now (after another chkdsk) remove whatever traces of the failed installs I can find and try one more freaking time-wasting time. And then I’ll try the clean install, and I will bet that it bricks the laptop.
Sadly, I had thought that I would eventually install on the old (this) XP desktop someday. HA!