Hi keezel, long time no see.

It does sound like a memory issue, though. I had a box like that once.
I have come across many, but something about this one makes me suspect the HDD. Unless the installer is very clever, if it hits a bad sector it will just freeze up...........that is certainly my experience with Win2K and XP. A smaller distro might load where a more bloated one might not?............I am not a Linux guru, I just use it a bit

I would test the HDD, as well as the RAM.

It would be interesting to see if Puppy Linux would install?