So yeah,

I have been having this problem for about a week now, and I can't seem to get to the bottom of it; it has caused me endless hours of frustration. Perhaps someone can help me out...

I am using Windows XP, and I am extremely annoyed with it, so I wanted to install Ubuntu.

First, about a week ago, I downloaded the Ubuntu .iso and burned it to a cd. I didnt check the checksums or anything, but I assumed it burned successfully, because Nero said so.

So I start the Ubuntu setup, and everything runs smoothly, until I get an error during the base installation; something along the lines of debootstrap error, "check target/var/bootstrap.log" or something. I think that I actually got past this part on a successive installation, but didn't make a separate partition for GRUB, and so that screwed me over some more.

I checked the CD integrity with Breezy, and it said that the CD is corrupt.

But that's just history. Now I have recovered Windows (actually, reinstalled... ugh), and I tried downloaing the iso again. So I check the image, and lo and behold, the checksum of the downloaded file doesn't match the checksum online. So i download it again, and again, and again... each time trying different download managers, system settings, router firmware... Jesus I can't think of anything else!!! (i can download smaller files just fine, but bigger things like Eclipse and even Adobe Acrobat Reader seem to be screwing up)

This is driving me insane

All I am asking for is some advice here. Can somebody please help me, so I can get Ubuntu, get rid of Windows, and get on with life?!?!

1. use a downloadmanager like filezilla to download the iosimages.

Anytime I do a major download, I shut down all running programs and disable my screen saver. I have had things like that mess up a download.

The problem is that checksum errors occur not only with downloaded ISOs, but also with those free CDs. Tonight I tried to install Ubuntu on a freshly built machine and didn't have any luck: all of my disks were deemed by the installer as 'corrupt'. It looks like there is some kind of compatibility issue or so.

I figured out my problem a while ago... it turned out that my memory (RAM) was bad... hope that will help some people with file corruption problems. Ubuntu is great!

I use Azureus to download many DVD isos and its never failed any checksums. Bittorrent is the best way to download any large files and it puts less strain on the mirror servers.

By the way, do you mean it fails the checksum after you burn it with nero?