Can't upgrade to Snow Leopard - please help!

Question

I have a 2nd generation (summer of 2009) MacBook Air with 10.5.8. I have the Snow Leopard Family Pack (with 3 valid installs left) and can NOT seem to upgrade.
I tried using the Remote Install app on my iMac (since it has a DVD drive) and it didn't work. I would click on the X to install the new OS, and it would give me a screen saying to restart to begin the process. It would restart and ignore the Remote Install step. Even if I restarted while holding the Option key and selected the remote disk, it still ignored the startup disk or just prompted to restart.
Then I tried installing the Upgrade disk onto a thumb drive. It caused the computer to restart every 10 seconds or so, until I yanked the thumb drive from the USB port. I tried using System Utilities to treat it as the Startup Drive - didn't change anything. Tried several ways that were suggested online: with an erase and restore, with a single GUID partition, etc. NOTHING worked. Same problem every time where the computer will restart every 10 seconds.
HELP! Anyone have a surefire way to make this work???

Answer 1

If you have an 8 GB USB flash drive then start by formatting it properly:
Drive Preparation
1.  Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.  If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button.  When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area.  If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing.  SMART info will not be reported  on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
When formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer.  Now insert the installer DVD into the optical drive and wait for it to mount on the Desktop.  Do the following:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder. 
2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window. 
4. Check the box labeled Erase destination.
5. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field. 
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.   
Destination means the USB flash drive. Source means the Installer Disc Image.