IPhone 4 - extreme errors downloading iOS 5

Question

Hello, please help me!
My name is John and I am 16 years old.
I attempted to download iOS 5 a few hours ago, and have since been dragged through a series of errors. My ability to recount every error along the way is impaired, and I hope that the information I am able to provide will be enough.
I plugged in my iPhone 4 and began the download process for iOS 5. I had to leave the room for about 20 minutes. When I left, I "think" my iPhone was in the process of backing up. When I returned, the screen on my laptop had gone black. I moved the mouse and found I was at my login screen. I typed in my password, and was returned to the screen, where an error message informed me something about there being an issue backing up or restoring my iPhone's content. the error tag (-50) was at the end.
I've since gone through a quadzillion amount of steps, nearly all of which I have forgotten, and am now at this point:
EDIT: When I clicked "John's iPhone" page again, I can see all of my phones information. If I click Restore, it asks me if I want to back up my settings. Before I had been clicking Back up, and kept arriving at the same error. If I click don't Back Up, it warns me that if I restore my iphone to factory settings, all of my media and other data will be erased. I obviously don't want that... but do I have to do it?
When I plug in my device, the page under "John's iPhone" is titled: Set Up Your iPhone. I can set it up as a new iPhone, or restore from backup. My only two backups are some time during march, and an option for a few minutes ago. The option from a few minutes ago would probably be the backup of an empty, content-less iPhone. Earlier I was able to view the amount of data stored on my iPhone, and it told me that it was empty.
Anyway, the main issue right now is, when I try to restore from the backup of my iphone from march and a few minutes ago, I get the error message: "iTunes could not restore the iPhone "John's iPhone" because the backup session failed".
At this point I am going crazy.
MY IPHONE ITSELF is at the stage where when I press the home button, the big word "iPhone" appears with the scroll bar at the bottom reading "slide to set up" in a million different languages. I then choose to enable location services, choose a wifi network, and either setup a new iphone, restore from icloud backup, or restore from itunes backup. I choose iTunes backup. I click next, and it tells me "connect to itunes"
I am connected to itunes. I am being bombarded with this error message and have no idea what to do. I'm afraid all of my contacts and images have been lost. Please help ASAP. I appreciate it so much.

Answer 1

If this is on the actual download from itunes then this is an issue with your ISP.
If this is on installing the IOS to your phone (after extracting file), then it could be a security software issue.