Why can't I reinstall OS x ?

Three days ago, my Mac Mini crashed while my son was playing World of Warcraft. It would not start back up, and when we used the start up disk to reboot, it could not repair the errors on the disk.
Today, I attempted to erase the old volume and reinstall OSx. I believe the erase went ok--it didn't really tell me if it was successful or not.
As for the reinstallation, I don't know if I am doing it wrong or what, but it keeps giving me the message that there was an "error in installing the software: please try installing again". So, I have now restarted and attempted unsuccessfully to reinstall 3 times.
So my two questions are:
A. How do I know if I successfully erased my drive? and
B. What could I be doing wrong on installation? My Install CD's are pristine. Could it be that my hard drive is physically damaged? My teenager has been using it heavily during the summer for marathon WOW sessions--could he have damaged it somehow?
Any suggestions on what I should do at this point?

Well, you may just be hosed. If you've really erased the HD and can's install the OS, as I said before, either the install disks are bad, or there's a hardware issue.
Typically, when a Mac behaves badly, I'd boot from an installer CD and run DiskUtility to check the HD. If that reports no errors/problems, I'd boot in single user mode (hold down cms-S when you boot). type fsck -fy once it's booted. If that reports errors and says the disk was modified, try it a few more times. It may eventually say the HD checked out OK. If it keeps reporting problems, fsck likely won't help. But keep in mind, that fsck works on installed OSes. If you have no installed OS, it probably won't help.You can then try installing again.
You can try also resetting the PRAM
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
The sad truth follows:
If you can's get the OS to install on an erased HD, either the Memory, the HD, or some other hardware on your mini has gone bad. I'd suggest googling for replacing Mac mini memory or Mac mini HD, and see what you hubby and his boss are willing to try. I've no experience with replacing the memory or HD on a mini, so I'm out of suggestions other than Google is your friend, you may have to bring your mini for expensive repairs, consider a new iMac and get the AppleCare extended warranty on any computer that is hard to crack open.
Finally, your son, unless he dropped, kicked, threw the mini, probably is innocent
But please feel free to post back with any more questions/comments about troubleshooting this issue.

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