Perhaps the difference is I'm putting the image on a HDD as my USB drive speeds suck from what I can tell. Maybe I should put the image on a USB drive and see if I have the same issue.
No that should not make a difference. I burn the image to HDD's also and USB acts identical. So the problem is most likely how your main router is handling DHCP (DNS) in your network. I will fix this by updating the hosts file. It's an easy fix ...don't worry.