Installer Crash

[thedayofdays]

Let's just get one thing out of the way, quickly. I don't use forums much, nor am I familiar with standard forum social protocols. My apologies.

I have a laptop that was just replaced, so I decided to have a little fun with the old one and install 11.04. I was ready for a fresh start with the old one, and I had previously moved all the important contents of the HDD to my external, and then to another computer runnin W7. Unfortunately, the installer made it to the end of its task, at which point an error appeared that said something or other couldn't be loaded from the CD. (I was booting from USB at that time.)

I tried again, and it made it to the same point in the install cycle, the very end, at which point a window appeared and said: "The installer has crashed." and then some business about reporting a bug by doing x y and z.

Honestly, I just want to wipe the drive on my computer and install 11.04 from scratch. Why is this so darned difficult an idea?

thedayofdays

If it helps, my computer is an Acer Aspire 3680 that used to run Windows Vista, and later, Windows 7.

[thedayofdays]

To be specific, the windows that come up during the install process are:

(small popup window over installer, featuring read circle with white bar through it)
Heading: apt configuration problem
body: An attempt to configure apt to install additional packages from the CD failed.
*end*

(Larger, text based window)
Heading: Installer Crashed
Subheading: Installer crashed
Body: We're sorry; the installer crashed. Please file a new bug report at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+filebug (do not attach your details to any existing bug) and a developer will attend to the problem as soon as possible. to help the developers understand what went wrong, include the following detail in your bug report and attach the files /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman
*end*

After that, there are no more options. The programming just dies, and the only way out is to shut down the computer. I am incredibly new to this whole Ubuntu thing (as the profile might say, it's my 'first cup of Ubuntu'.

Help would be much appreciated. I see no reason to trash this old laptop, especially when I know there would be good use for it.