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Hey lolcats, sorry, I can see you have posted on several forums. To save going over the same diagnostics you have already been through, can you give me a summary of what you have ruled out so far? You mentioned memory was tested so far.

Also, when it freezes, what do you actually see on the screen, a blue background from the gui? When it freezes, is it a hardware or software freeze, does the number lock light switch on/off if you tap it? I can't see it being a software issue to be honest, as not much can go wrong at this point at a software level.

i have tested the dvd drive and teh hard drive, and the install disc, they are not the problem. i ran memtest 86+ on the memory for 2 hours with no errors. i suspect a ram compatibility issue or power supply issue, i haven't been able to switch those yet to test that way. i haven't been able to test the processor but i doubt that is the issue. i have tried with onboard video only and with a video card, same result.

the numlock does indeed fail to respond when you try to toggle it.
on vista install, yes i see the bluish gui screen when it freezes. on ubuntu, it freezes when it starts formatting/partitioning the drive.

A couple of things to try that have worked for other people with the same problem.

Update BIOS and load Optimized settings not Fail-safe Even just try Optimized before updating BIOS.

If there are any jumpers on the sata hard drive remove them.

Try another cpu - although it seems unlikely a few people have had this problem with that particular processor.

Make sure you have your ram setup correctly in BIOS with correct voltage settings.

it is F5 bios, the latest version. i have tried with optimized and fail safe, and with almost all "services" turned off (usb, etc).
how should ram be set up "correctly"? you mean at the listed cas speed?
there are no jumpers on my hard drive.

See, that to me would suggest an issue with either the hard drive or the hdd controller on the motherboard. You sure you have ruled these out? Some motherboards also have an issue with larger hdd sizes?

Also, when installing, make sure that there are no devices, cards etc that should be connected that won't be required at this stage. Additional CD-ROM's, PCI cards, external devices, especially storage devices.

how do i check if the hdd controller is bad?

There's no test you'll be able to do yourself, other than testing out another disk. To be honest, between them, the HDD is much more likely.