I am trying to install ubuntu on one of my harddrives (formatted) for the first time. When I try to install ubuntu it gives me this error.
I'm completely lost, please let me know what I'm doing wrong or how I can fix this error. Thanks in advance. oh and let me know if theres any other information you need and let me know how I can get it for you.

When you're booting the system, you need to pass the 'noapic' option to kernel. You should have such an option just before you get the error.

Yes this is an old post. Sorry for digging it up, but because I have the same issue and found something I consider report-worthy, I wanted to search for the same problem but didn't want to make a brand new thread.

I've noticed that if I let grub count down from 5 seconds to 2 seconds, I'm able to go ahead with my kernel selection. If I make my choice and press enter within one second or so, it comes up with this message. By extension, my suspicion is that if you allow your bootloader to count down from 30 seconds (if that's your timer), you should be fine to select your kernel at 27 seconds.

Also, this could be related to some people's reports that noapic or noioapic don't do anything for them.

I'm using the default 2.6.22-14-generic kernel from Ubuntu 7.10.

I don't know what the issue could be, but this might help someone be a little less frustrated.

Some time back I was faced with a similar issue. I wrote a blog entry a month ago. Please see if it helps.