Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Got freezing while preparing to install
Solution 1:
I had this problem myself! Luckily, I found a useful answer: No hard drive formatting, or mucking around with partitions required! Its a bit complex, and you need to use the terminal.
Open up Ubuntu like you normally would, from your flash drive.
Click "Try Ubuntu".
Press Ctrl+Alt+T.
A terminal, or a cute purple box, will appear!
Leave it open for the time being and start the installer, untick all the boxes, and click"Next". Ouch! It hung.
Here comes the tricky part... Type
ps -ef | egrep "dosfsck|ntfs"
something like this will show:
waterlubber@UbuntuAcer:~$ ps -ef | egrep "dosfsck|ntfs"
ubuntu 4458 4401 0 18:02 pts/0 00:00:00 egrep --color=auto dosfsck|ntfs
root 4313 4242 stuff stuff stuff ............................ntfs
Note the "4313" next to "root". This is important
Now, type
sudo kill 4313
Replace 4313 with whatever number is next to"root" on the list. You may find some other stuff, try to figure out which number is the Process ID. (Thats that 4313 we saw earlier)
Don't bother killing ubuntu, if you do, nothing will happen other then a not found message
Repeat the process of typing
ps -ef | egrep "dosfsck|ntfs"
and killing the process until 'ubuntu' is the lone survivor. Take a look at the installer...is it working? If not, try it again! If worst comes to worst, make sure you don't have too many partitions with 'gparted' (Its in applications)
Hope this helped!