LinuxQuestions.org - Many distros fail to install on Toshiba 480CDT

Hi there, I have a Toshiba 480CDT laptop, and have been trying for some time now to install a lightweight desktop namely XFCE or ICEWM to make use of the machine. Firstly, when I began to install an array of distros (xubuntu install cd, debian, vector linux, DSL), the system would nearly always produce segementation errors early on in the installation. Ifound that changing the bios PCMCIA option from Auto select to Cardbus enabled me to (most of the time) get through particularly the xubuntu install much further, consistantly. However, when installing xubuntu at the base install stage, it would get to unpacking zlib1g, and fail, with Alt-F4 showing Debootstrap error 139. DSL would just about run live about 50% of the time, the rest of the time producing segmentation faults. Memtests shows my ram is fine (160M). I have even tried the xubuntu live/install version, with the system freezing at about 30% of the HDD install. Again, vector linux was very tempremental during the install stage. I have been looking at the Alt-F4 output for Xubuntu and have noticed that it usually fails to load some modules, sometimes warning me in install mode, and others not. The specs of my laptop are available here. Could my CD drive be playing up? Or is there a deeper hardware issue, and if so, should I be booted with additional boot parrameters? I desperation, I have also tried the netisnt version of debian, strangly failing to configure the network with DCHP, and more often than not, freezing during some stage.

Any help is much appreciated,