This sounds like badly damaged installation media, or flaky hardware.
If it doesn't misbehave in the same way from boot to boot, never getting
very far, the "flaky hardware" scenario seems more likely. If it
misbehaves consistently, then damaged installation media is more likely.
The next step might be to use a a tool like memtest86 to find out
whether your RAM is reliable, or to get a small "rescue disc" version of
Linux to see if it boots reliably.
I noticed the following vaguely similar report against redhat 7.x:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/archive/2/2001/08/4/5849
which was apparently solved by not probing the IDE interface with a
particular CD-RW drive on it. Relevant to you? Probably not.
Jeff
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