1) I think you should check your partitions and make sure you've got them setup properly. Perhaps try another filesystem than you're already using?
2) This sounds stupid, but are you positive your HDD works fine? Have you recently had other operating systems on it?
3) This is slightly stupid as well - are you sure your CD drive doesn't have any issues? I've had problems before where my CD drive would work fine in short burst situations like moving files in Windows, but when installing an OS it would just die right then and there.