Hi,

I have installed and uninstalled Ubuntu and some of it's variants more than once, so maybe I'm not an absolute beginner, but I'm still pretty ignorant.

My issue is, when I boot Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu (even Mint) from a USB stick and choose to install it, the installation window won't get past the "Preparing to install... " part, when it checks if I have enough disk space, internet connection and power source. I wouldn't say it gets stuck because I'm able to quit and everything works just fine, nothing crashes. It just won't go any further when I hit "Continue".

I've tried booting on another PC and managed to go beyond this part, so I'm sure the USB stick isn't the problem. Also, it happened with all distros mentioned, so something's definitely wrong with my laptop. I'm guessing it's got something to do with my partitions.

My HDD is partitioned like so: Window's C: ( ~200 GB); D: ( ~8 GB) and one I made long ago, but isn't unallocated space ( 30 GB)

So should I erase that partition? Is having no unallocated space somehow causing the problem?
Can I fix/do everything I need to do while booted from the USB stick? (Presently with Kubuntu 12.10)

Thanks in advance for any response