Install failed

[rikona]

Ubuntu is not starting off well for me...

To preserve ext3 compatibility, I pre-formatted a disk with ext3
partitions - 10G /, 2G swap, 900+G /home. Used a downloaded 10.04.1
'desktop' CD, md5 is OK, burned at the slowest speed, write verified.

By choosing manual handling of partitions, I was able to preserve ext3
for / and /home, but it insisted in formatting swap. Seemed OK since
that would not cause any compatibility problems [and, there was no
other choice].

Looked good for a while but late in the install got a 'dpkg error' -
it said the installer failed and I should choose another installer
[but I have no idea how to do that during the install]. It said I
could proceed, but that pkgs may be installed incorrectly, and that I
would not be able to de-install them properly. I went ahead. It seemed
to do a lot of things after that. I noticed there was a 'skip' box
that popped up, and that the install was more than 100% done [got to
about 125% done, or so, whatever that means :-) ].

Right at the end it said it could not install the boot loader, and
offered other disk locations to try. Nothing worked, so no boot loader
- and, as expected, it does not boot. I now have a large, heavy
paperweight...

It's a desktop, and has been running Mandrive 2008 for some time.
Other distros - MD2010, Knoppix, etc come up OK on the box. [Knoppix
seems to come up OK on just about anything, though. :-) ]

Given the installer problem, I am considering trying the alternate CD,
but thought I'd get other ideas first. What do I need to do to get a
successful install?

Also, is it possible that the problem(s) are caused by trying to use
pre-formatted ext3 partitions?

Thanks,

 rikona