btw, have you tried virtual drive things, like Nero, or Alcohol 120% ?
I'm thinking that instead of booting into safe mode and then installing, say, a game (or something that reads most of a CD/DVD), you could just stay in normal mode, copy the CD/DVD to your hdd, and mount it as a virtual drive.

Why do this ? If it works, it might be faster - if enough of the CD/DVD's contents are read to make it worthwhile; it will especially be useful if you intend to use it several times - as is usually the case with a game.