Importing XML woes – any ideas?

Though the usage of broken or just plain damaging plugins, I needed a fix so I made a fresh install in the root, leaving the old install in its original subfolder until its finished. Now I’m having issues:

1. Importing the XML keeps timing out at some point, it just picks a spot and hangs permanently. I just scroll up and goto the import page again and retry, it quickly skips of ther the completed actions (ie.. already exists) and moves on… but eventually locking up again.

Is this common?
(edit– it finally finished after 8 attempts and 930 lines of tasks)
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2. The XML file still has metadata for plugins I have no intention of using again. Will this metadata be included as table options or will it be discarded? Role Scoper was a poor one that always broke with the slightest updating and was prone to locking up pictures and posts when that happened or if it was disabled/deleted, and I see its meta data in there. Oddly enough, I dont see any metadata fields on the imported-posts edit page of the new install.

Will this metadata be included as table options or will it be discarded?
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3. I got a lot of these during the import task output:

23. Post already exists

or

234. Post 02052009002 already exists.

As far as I can tell, there arent any mystery non-titled or number-titled posts appearing, so I’ve no idea what this means. Anyone know?
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4. How does wordpress decide something is an invalid filetype, and then refuse to deal with it?
blogs/wp-content/uploads/110120081.3gp... Invalid file typeRemote file error: Invalid file type
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Thanks in advance for any input. I still have some theme issues to un-muck as well as trying to import my old NexGen Galleries… but other wise, thats it.