Want to erase HD and install Mountain Lion

I have a mid-2009 macbook pro with osx lion.  I just downloaded mountain lion and made a boot disk.  I'd like to erase HD and install Mountain lion.  I wanted to test the boot disk before proceeding, so I put it in, restarted holding "option".  The options of selecting the HD, Recovery Drive, or the Boot Disk were presented.  I selected the boot disk and nothing happens.  I get the pale screen with progress circle in the middle and it goes on and on forever.  However when I'm on the desktop, the boot disk opens just fine, and I can install from there.  Can anyone help me troubleshoot this?  I'd like to erase the HD but I'm afraid the boot disk won't load if I do, and I won't be able to install mountain lion (or anything for that matter).

Chris McCoy wrote:
It's the OS X Mountail Lion.app file.  I was told I could create a bootable flashdrive with the InstallESD.dmg file. But I'm guessing that still leaves me with installing from internet.
Thanks for all your help.
Yes, you can use the InstallESD.dmg file from that and create a bootable USB thumb drive which you can boot from and install ML from that thumb drive.
Do you know how to extract the InstallESD.dmg file from that and use Disk Utility to Restore it to a USB thumb drive? You should be able to from within Mavericks.
Or you might be able to download DiskMaker X 3.0.3 and use that app along with an 8GB USB thumb drive to create your ML installer drive. You would point DiskMaker X to your OS X Mountain Lion.app file and follow the prompts.

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