Comment 37 for bug 636711

This may be helpful. I've got two nearly identical Compaq Evo desktops
at the office. One loaded 10.10 flawlessly from the usb and the other
one died on the squashfs file system mount (using the very same usb).
Since they're so similar, the differences might be important. I've
uploaded the lshw output from both machines here (the machine which
failed to load 10.10 is running 8.10):

http://www.ncf.ca/~es625/usb_install_non_working_compaq

and here:

http://web.ncf.ca/~es625/usb_install_working_compaq

Maybe someone can figure out what's going on.

One difference that could be a factor is in the video driver:

Bad machine:
     *-pci
          description: Host bridge
          product: 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub
Interface
          vendor: Intel Corporation
          physical id: 100
          bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
          version: 01
          width: 32 bits
          clock: 33MHz
          configuration: driver=agpgart-intel module=intel_agp <=
     *-display UNCLAIMED <=

Good machine:
    *-pci
          description: Host bridge
          product: 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub
Interface
          vendor: Intel Corporation
          physical id: 100
          bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
          version: 01
          width: 32 bits
          clock: 33MHz
          configuration: driver=agpgart-intel <=
          resources: irq:0 memory:f8000000-fbffffff <=
      *-display <=