I wanted to bring an old PIII-933MHz w/ 384MB RAM and NVidia GeForce2 MX to life by installing lubuntu.
I choose 'LIVE CD' from the boot menu of the CD and it loads perfectly into the LXDE environment.
I play around to get a feel for the desktop, like what i see and decide to install it.
Everything seems to be going fine as it copies the files but after about 20-30 minutes the install window all of a sudden disappears and it hangs! There is no error message, just the hourglass icon spinning endlessly.
I try installing again and the same thing happens at a random time about 3/4 of the way through the install.
Really wanting to install lubuntu I burn a 2nd CD (at a slower speed) and get the same result.
What could be going wrong?

use the alternate installer cd.

With that much ram and live cd ... hour glass will spin endlessly

Agreee with the above; get more RAM or use the alternate/minimal install CD for low-RAM computers.

Shouldn't 384MB be enough for a light distro using LXDE? The max for this computer is 512MB, will another 128MB make a difference? When I boot into the LIVE CD it loads and runs perfectly, I just can't install it to HDD.

When you are running in Live mode you need enough RAM for the operating system PLUS the RAM required by the installer.
When you use the Alternate CD there is no Live mode, just straight to the installer, so the RAM requirement is lower.

Also it is a very good idea to check the CD for burn errors (this should be one of the options when you first boot) or to use a USB (since old CD-ROM drives sometimes are tempermental).

Thanks, I'll try the alternate CD tonight and report back.

p.s. I did a check before and there were no errors.

See "Low RAM Computers" section here for details about installing Lubuntu on older machines.

So I found the downloads page for all versions and used the alternate CD. Initially I clicked on the quick link to download the full Live version because I assumed 384MB was enough; interestingly it says the minimum required for the Live version is 384MB which I met!

Anyways the install went pretty smooth except at the end when I rebooted and ended up with the grub prompt. For some reason the config file was named 'grub.cfg.new' so I renamed it 'grub.cfg', rebooted, and got the grub menu.
Now I have a couple of questions:

1. How do I configure Lubuntu so that my user is logged in automatically?
2. How do I get a trash icon on the desktop?

That option was available to you during the installation on the page where you create your user. I don't have Lubuntu available to check but I'm sure someone will come along. You could see what you find from the menu, the icon in the extreme lower left of the Desktop or the other icons there.

You need to edit /etc/lxdm/default.conf if i remember correctly and edit/insert this line,

where "username" is the name of the account that need to login automatically.

If you really want a trash can on your desktop, check this site
http://forum.lxde.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2018
It explains how to do it.