7echno7im said:
Something else my brother ran into that was similar on a Windows XP install is that his hard drive was defective and there was a problem somewhere on the disk. We narrowed it down and found it was somewhere on the first 10GB. We created a 12 GB partition, then another with he rest of the drive. We selected the 2nd bigger partition to "get over the hump" then everything ran fine, but he could not use the first 10GB.

We only did this because he didn't have another drive and didn't want to buy another.
To get around this, do a full format instead of a quick. A full format checks for bad sectors on a drive and marks them, a quick format does not. You should only quick format on a known good drive (ie. new)