Lockups during install

[Brad Griffith]

I'm putting together a new PC for Ubuntu and I am getting lockups during
installation (Either a hard lock during the formatting of the hard drive
or a segfault during base install). I've tried with Warty, Hoary, and
Breezy Colony 3. My motherboard is an nForce2-based Chaintech 7NJL6.
Nothing seems to be overheating.
An interesting thing to note is that running a LiveCD, both the warty
live CD and SLAX, works very well and there are no lockups. memtest
passed perfectly on SLAX. And when I tried to format hda1 while in the
Ubuntu LiveCD, I got a lockup again. 
So it is apparently something related to the hard drive or the I/O
controller. I believe it is the I/O controller because the hard drive
was working just last week in an older system and this morning I ran out
to buy a new hard drive just to make sure that wasn't the problem. Same
symptoms with the new drive?
Is there some special boot parameter I have to use with my motherboard
or something? How do I even figure out what I/O controller is onboard?
Please help. This is quite frustrating. Thank you.

Cheers,
Brad