10.04 install hangs

[morgan.john]

I am trying to install 10.04 LTS on my hp dv7t-2000. After several attempts I finally used a gparted live cd to establish the disk partitions.
Now the install consistently hangs at 25% "copying files" with no disk activity on either the hard drive or the install cd.
The system has ATI Radeon graphics, 3gb of ram, and 320gb hard drive. The partitions I set up are

/boot 100mb
swap 5gb
/ 20gb
/home ~260gb

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Quackers]

Welcome to UF.
How many primary partitions existed on the hard drive before you created the new partitions? Also were the new partitions created as primary or logical?

[morgan.john]

All of the partitions are primary and all of the disk space is accounted for. There were 2 partitions on the original Vista system but both were deleted before I created the new ones. I have been running linux for 15 years or so on my desktop but this is my first try with a laptop. Again thanks for any and all help.

[Quackers]

Thank you, so you are not dual booting (not that you said you were).
Unless you specifically want one, most installations don't use a separate boot partition. I find that it can complicate matters, but the choice is yours, of course.

Have you tried selecting "try ubuntu" rather than installing ubuntu - just to see if the live desktop will load up without the need for boot options? This can be an indication as to whether boot options will be required during installation.

Have you checked the md5sum of the downloaded iso file?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM

If the md5sum is ok, it is a good idea to check the cd for errors (the check is the same even if a usb is used rather than a cd).
At the first purple screen press any key. Choose your language then on the next screen you will see the option to check for errors.

[morgan.john]

Back again. I seem to only have time to work on this on weekends. I verified the checksum for the cd on my desktop system and it agrees with the web site. I couldn't get the check routine to run on the notebook so have not been able to verify that it is being read correctly there. The "try ubuntu" seems to work fine. I have also tried installing from the live session with the same results.

[Quackers]

If you have seen the option to check the cd for errors and selected it, but the check does not run, I would suggest one (or both) of 2 things. The first is to lightly clean the laser on the cd drive by carefully wiping it with a clean dry lint-free cloth. The second would be to burn the image to a new cd using the slowest burn speed possible.

[morgan.john]

I finally got 10.04 installed on my laptop. Ultimately I installed from the 10.04 64 bit dvd torrent download. I used the text version of the install and asked for only a single root partition rather than having a separate /home partition. I don't know for sure which of of these variables did the trick but I suspect the partition issue since it gave me grief in other attempts. Other issues remain but they belong in a different thread. Thanks again to quackers.