Comment 75 for bug 1309578

Solution to my problem - (Thank you Rick Forberg!)
Linux Mint 17 Qiana won't install - keeps rebooting. It doesn't matter if the installation medium is a flash drive or CD. Once the live version loads it immediately reboots. There isn't enough time to install it. Once I managed to actually install it after dozens of tries. The result was it would get to the login, accept my credentials then reboot before actually loading. Thankfully after reading several of the posts on this page I was able to work out a procedure to install the OS, then fix the issue for my MSI desktops.

Most of the Desktops at work running Linux Mint are custom built MSI boards with the following configurations:
Motherboard: MSI A78M-E45
BIOS: AMI BIOS 25.1 (2013-12-09) & 25.3 (2014-03-19)
APU: AMD A10-5800K (quad core) Trinity 3.8 GHz
RAM: Patriot Viper DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) 4x4GB

and

Motherboard: MSI FM2-A55M-E33
BIOS: E7721AMS v11.4 (2013-10-23)
APU: AMD A8-5600K (quad core) 3.60GHz
RAM: HyperX DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) 2x4GB

Both desktop configurations had the same problem. They were running Linux Mint 15 and 16. I have now replaced some of them with Qiana 17. Installing Linux Mint 17 on them had been a problem. Here is what I did to fix it:

Once the live version started to load I kept the mouse constantly moving with one hand. With the other hand, using the keyboard, I started the installation utility and answered all the questions for the installation (I kept the mouse moving the entire time). Once the installation was finished the utility requested a restart. When the OS restarted I kept the mouse moving again, put in my login credentials and when Mint loaded I launched the terminal with <ctr>+<alt>+t.

In the terminal I updated the advanced packaging tool: apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
(This takes quite a while, but it is important to keep the mouse moving the entire time)

Then, I updated the display drivers: apt-get install fglrx-updates
(you will need to prepend these commands with sudo if you are not root when you run them)

After the the two commands (above) finished. I restarted the desktop and installation on the desktop has been stable ever since. This is true of all the desktops (configurations above). I hope this post will be helpful to anyone having problems with MSI motherboards. They are my systemboards of choice and I am very grateful to all the contributors of this forum. Your posts and insights have made this fix possible.