I've this msg came up..."At least one of the specified Xref failed to bid for unknown reason...."  I tried redoing the Xref (It's a base building dwg from an architect) but it's still doing that.  At this point I'm writing it off as Architect's dwg fault since I can't bind their original dwg.  I'm curious -- Any ideas of what could be the problem??

It could well be the architect's drawing, may have some objects created with an add-on like architectural desktop which can cause problems.

Forget binding and all that fancy stuff, just open the architects dwg, sweep select the whole thing, copy to clipboard. now open up whatever drawing you want and hit paste clipboard. done. you could even create a group to manage the paste clip as an "exref" of sorts. If you have problems at that point, then you can more easily narrow them down.