Hey all, I'm attempting to install Ubuntu 11.04 and get an error message "Could not retrieve the installation files".

The reason I would like to have Ubuntu on my laptop is because the drivers for internet broke on the windows 7 that I have, so I had to put it on a flash drive.

If your Windows drivers don't work, neither will wubi. Try booting directly from the live-CD.
You can then run the live-CD to test with, or install as a dual boot. (choose install side-by-side with existing operating system).
Backup your important files first though as there is no guarantee that nothing will go wrong.

Wait, so if my internet drivers don't work, then wubi wont work?

And I've tried doing the boot menu thing, it starts and then gives me a wall of text that doesn't do anything. I believe I can input data into it, it looks like the cmd

Wubi loads Linux as an application inside Windows.
Booting directly from the cd should give you a gui screen with an option to 'try without installing'
If it doesn't there are several possible reasons. First, the live-cd may be corrupt. You can check the .iso against the md5 hashsum provided on the Ubuntu download page.
Another possible cause is that there may be hardware issues interfering.
I'd suggest you give us as much details about your computer's hardware as possible, like graphics cards, network cards, sound cards etc. Also make and model of the computer, type of monitor used.
This can help to clarify if there are any known issues with your hardware.

I have a dell insperion 1545 running Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: Pentium Dual-Core CPU
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor
Display Adapter: Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family
Sound: IDT High Definition Audio

And I'm looking for another flash drive to put the whole text block it refered me to when it failed.