8.04 hangs at "Early Unpacking Initramfs"

[kmand]

This is on a Dell Inspiron 700M laptop that runs Gutsy with no problem. When I boot the Hardy Live CD it hangs at Early Unpacking Initramfs".

As another clue if I try running a Wubi install instead, on Ubuntu boot it stops immediately with "upper memory".

Don't know if the two are related.

Ideas?

[kmand]

No replies in 2 days. Let me add one more bit of info, this laptop only has 512MB of Ram. I've had success on systems with 1GB or more, and I'm suspicious since both errors seem memory related.