Can't install: "No installable kernel found"

[Sean Burns]

Hello! I'm a Linux novice who has run into an installation roadblock.
I've downloaded both the preview iso as well as the daily snapshot from 
2004-10-03.
Both matched their md5's & the installer verified the packages on the cd 
were good.
Near the end of the install I get this error:

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No installable kernel found
No installable kernel was found in the defined APT sources.
The current default kernel package is 'kernel-image'.
You may try to continue though this strange error is probably fatal.
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I saved the error reports to a floppy but I'm not sure what data would 
be helpful (syslog?).
I tried both the regular & expert install with the same result.
Here are some snippits from "messages":

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Setting up base-config (2.44ubuntu23) ...

Err file: warty/main Packages
 Read error - read (5 Input/output error)
Failed to fetch file:///cdrom/dists/warty/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz  
Read error - read (5 Input/output error)
Reading Package Lists...
E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old 
ones used instead.
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This occurs at about 81% of the "Installing the Ubuntu base system" phase.