Write failure on transfer!

[tranzloosent]

Need help. I am receiving the following error message when trying to do 
a fresh install of FreeBSD 5.4 on an ECS K7S5A motherboard with AMD 
Athlon XP 2000, 512MB, 8GB hdd.

Message:
Write failure on transfer! (wrote -1 of 1425408 bytes)

This message appears during the transfer of the base distribution. I get 
it if I try to install from CDROM and FTP.

I have done the following:
tried install from CDROM
tried install from several FTP sites
tried installing on different harddrives
disabled PNP aware OS in bios
tried using default partitioning scheme
tried using custom partitioning scheme

When I press the following key combos, I can see the following information:

ALT-F4
#

ALT-F2
/stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error
/stand/cpio: warning: skipped 21504 bytes of junk
/stand/cpio: No such file or directory
/stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error
/stand/cpio: warning: skipped 18432 bytes of junk
/stand/cpio: No such file or directory
/stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error
/stand/cpio: warning: skipped 190976 bytes of junk
/stand/cpio: No such file or directory
/stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error
/stand/cpio: warning: skipped 25600 bytes of junk
/stand/cpio: No such file or directory
/stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error
/stand/cpio: warning: skipped 26624 bytes of junk
/stand/cpio: No such file or directory
/stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error
/stand/gunzip: <fd:0>: invalid distances set
/stand/cpio: warning: skipped 47104 bytes of junk
/stand/cpio: No such file or directory
/stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error
/stand/cpio: warning: skipped 36352 bytes of junk
/stand/cpio: No such file or directory
/stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error
/stand/cpio: premature end of file

Any help would be greatly appreciated.