Trying to Erase and Reinstall Yosemite from install drive

I am trying to prepare my 2009 Mac Pro for selling. I erased the startup disk from disk utility, and now I'm trying to reinstall Yosemite using an install file on an external hard drive. Every time I boot to the external hard drive, choose "Install OS X" from the utilities menu, and then wait for the "Preparing to install" screen. After preparing to install, however, I get the error message:
"An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again."
I had a working Yosemite install on this machine before erasing the disk, so I know it can handle it. The external hard drive is a LaCie Rugged connected via Firewire 800 (I also tried via USB). My Mac Pro also has two additional 1TB drives in bays 2 and 3 (both erased and empty).
MY SYSTEM
Early 2009 Mac Pro
2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
16GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024MB

UPDATE: I just reset the NVRAM, and that seems to have solved the problem.

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