If your machine(s) can boot from usb, then give Unetbootin a shot. It is in
the repositories. It works well with Ubuntu (but not all distros). A 2 GB
usb key will do for any of the *buntus, but I prefer a 4 GB as I use it for
multiple distros and some fill a DVD.

The trick in making it work is to have an empty key (use Gparted to format
to FAT 32) and to have it mounted BEFORE you open Unetbootin. Otherwise it
will not be able to locate the key. It is faster and does not waste disks or
have burning issues. If you can't or don't want to try usbs, then you might
want to burn at a slower speed, try different media brand and check your
DVD/CD drive.

Have you considered the possibility that your burner may either be defective
or has a problem with that brand of CD/ DVD? Sometimes a run of blanks is
defective, not all in the box but more than one in sequence.

Can you boot from that thumb drive when it has another operating system on
it? - try Puppy Linux. Have you been able to successfully boot other
computers with those same CD's and flash drive? Some otherwise perfectly
good computers are very intolerant of some media.

How old is the hard drive and is there a functional operating system on it?
Could it have just developed a bad boot sector? Have you run a disk checking
utility?

Just some random thoughts based on my trouble shooting experience. Perhaps
something here might help...

Does the installation stop at the same point every time, i.e. sector
353831, or does it fail randomly ? If random then you may have memory
errors so run Memtest86+ on the system ( keep tapping ESC during boot
or get the stand-alone boot CD from http://www.memtest.org/ ).

If the failure is at the same point every time then there may be a
problem with the type of file being read but it would be very strange
for multiple CD's burned with multiple ISO's to all fail identically !

Wiped out that thumb drive, went to a new one.
The latest pen drive fails on 10.10, 11.04 and 11.10 for me.
Oddly enough, with the drive in the usb port, I forgot to remove
the cd with 11.04 in it and it did install. I didnt realize it thinking
it was my thumb drive but when I saw - Upgrade to 11.10 I thought
crap! It didnt work!

Well, stupid me decided to leave 11.04 installed and just update to 11.10
but the screen went to sleep and now I cant wake it. I dont know where it
is in the upgrade process either.

Looks like 11.04 is the most up to date you can go on that hardware
but even so it also sounds like there are some hardware issues with it
anyway so it would be a good idea to get to the bottom of those first
before continuing to use it. Can you give use details of the hardware
that's causing you all this grief ?

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9950 at 2.83GHz
RV730 PRO [Radeon HD 4650] graphics card
8gb ram

However, I have 11.10 installed. Im still running 10.04 on
my second drive though because Im not entirely sure about
some things... like running apache, setting up my working www dir
and installing deb files.

That hardware should handle anything you throw at it ATI drivers
are a bit of a problem though but that shouldn't prevent the basic
install.

See you got 11.10 working on a separate HD - not multi-boot then, just
change the boot drive when you want to switch OS ?

Apache is only needed if you are serving up web pages from your system
so are you doing that ? If so, is this just locally or over internet ?
Serving web pages over internet brings a whole bunch of issues around
security and really you would be better with the server edition of
Ubuntu and reading up on how to lock it down. Doing it with a desktop
version is possible but you do lay yourself wide open if you aren't
careful - yes Ubuntu is secure on the desktop but servers are a whole
different ball game and you really do need to know what you are doing.
If nothing else, serve from a dedicated machine and have it on a DMZ
through the router to isolate from your network.

Right, not multi-boot. Im moving very slowly right now.

Yea, I need apache for testing of sites I maintain.
I dont host locally. I just create the site here and upload
them to their hosts.

My partner is a web site builder and she uses a test account on her
hosting to build sites, that way she can be sure that when it goes
live it will work as designed. Especially important if using PHP
and/or MySQL as the versions vary between servers. Saves all the
hassle of trying to run your own server locally :-)

That works for one account but when you maintain more - it gets much
more difficult to do that. I maintain sites on many hosts, most not
in the US, so I setup my environment to match theirs. Much easier
and faster to do on my own computer.

Why not try the disk/usbstick 'Live' and you'll soon tell if it runs OK. A
fresh install us the preferred way to update.
This netbook fouled up two tries at 'upgrading' but a fresh install was clean
and uneventful.