Can someone tell me how to figure out if i installed my bonus cd correctly? details too, pleeze thanks

Erm, by checking if the merchants appeared at the place they should have? ;)
There should be two around...
One in the middle of the Copper Coronet, a guy named Joluv, and one in the back of the Adventurer's Market, Deidre. ;)

Or, looking at it from a different perspective, you could check the override folder in your BG2 director, and look if you can find the following two files, which hold the information about the two bonus merchants:
ar0406.bcs
AR0702.bcs

thank you both for responding so quickly. sorry though, i need more specifics as to how to find the file on my computer to look in...not real computer saavy [img]smile.gif[/img] and if i dont see those files, what did i do wrong? i installed the cd. it shows up under 'programs on my computer. thanks

Go to where you installed BG2, usually in C:\program files\black isle\Baldurs Gate II\override, or something similar, the files should be there (unless it was installed on a diferent hard drive, or partition you should be able to just type it in in the run command from the start menu.