Installing Ubuntu 8.04 on an ASUS F8Va-C1 laptop

As my primary workstation, I just ordered an ASUS F8Va-C1 laptop from Newegg. On the surface, this thing looked slick. 2.53GHz Intel Core2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, ATI Radeon 3650 video card with 1G dedicated VRAM, and a 320GB HDD. It came with Vista installed, but I figured I could just resize the Windows partition and install Ubuntu. The best laid plans...

I decided to go with Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex. Lacking a CD burner on my current machine, I had one of my colleagues burn a copy for me. I put the CD into my new laptop (after spending a good 15 minutes trying to figure out that F2 was the key to get into the BIOS - serves me right for not RTFMing) and turned it on. Splash screen came up, and eventually I was presented with a white screen and nothing more. No sounds, no cursor, nothing.

Then I tried 8.04, and at least got the LiveCD to boot. I tried doing the install from the LiveCD, but ended up getting SquashFS errors (i.e. bad sectors on the CD). I took the thing home after work, burned an 8.10 CD according to the Coasterless CD burning instructions for Linux (just in case I was having issues caused by a poorly-burned CD), and had the same results. I burned an 8.04 CD using the same instructions and got a little further, but again got SquashFS errors. I booted the CD via an external drive I had laying around, and got even further, but still got SquashFS errors. As it was the night before Thanksgiving, and I had to be up at 0500 to brine the turkey, I decided not to play with it any further.

Today I brought the laptop back into work and installed an Ubuntu 8.04 network install image onto a USB stick using UNetbootn. So far, this is going well. I've been able to set up my disk using LVM (unfortunately, in all the installation attempts I deleted the Vista install, but hey, it's Vista. I'll likely be putting XP Pro on the Windows partition.) I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

Those SquashFS errors, though, have me worried. I suspect that the laptop's internal CD drive is messed up - I need to do some tests to be sure.