Installers won't Install

[Urkle]

That is VERY strange. I would suspect possibly a driver issue with the disk controller on the motherboard or bad memory.

Have you run memtest86 on the system? (you should be able to find a package for it in ubuntu to add to your grub menu).

Now are you copying with the GUI? or via the command line with cp?

What kernel revision are you using as well? and what chipset is the nvidia motherboard chipset?

Have you tried checking for firmware updates to your motherboard?