On my new asus eee 1015pem I've tried to install debian 6.0 amd64, debian 6.0 i386 netinst and kubuntu 10.04 LTS and64 from usb, using both linuxlive and universal usb creator. I've event tried wubi, which also failed, though the problem may very well be unrelated.
[wubilog] http://myhideout.eu/temp/wubi-10.04-rev189.log http://myhideout.eu/temp/wubi-11.04-rev211.log nb: the md5sum error is unlikely to be correct. I may have made some sort of mistake, though I can't figure out what. [/wubilog]
The problem is the step just before the partitioning, where there's some disk detection/scanning going on. In debian it stops at 50%, in kubuntu 47-48%. I've noticed no disk activity at all. It's not frozen, simply inactive. Yes, I have waited for a very long time for something to happen I'm perfectly able to boot in to live mode. The usb key has been used for this purpose on numerous occasions, so it is unlikely to be the problem. I've tried messing around in the bios, ahci, ide, compatability, etc., but haven't made a difference.
I'm out of ideas and need help, as I absolutely refuse to run windows on a hardware platform like this. I have of course done a lot of googlin, and tried various support chats, but have had no luck at all.
Best thing I can come up with, apart from some odd bios setting that I have overlooked, is that windows/asus have somehow "locked" the disk, though I'm not even sure that is possible. Best solution I can think of is to nuke the disk, but I date not as it will render the computer completely useless if it does not solve the problem.
I do hope you can help, otherwise I've wasted a lot of money.
Edit: I should mention after checking, the disk is mounted in live mode and don't seem to course trouble. There are 3 partitions, 2 of which seem to be regular windows partitions, but the last one is rather odd, containing asus express gate. Not even sure it's actually located on the hard drive.