Ubuntu Installation :: Get To A "fresh" System For Install Success?

I have a somewhat old box that I want to install 11.04 on for experimentation. Eventually I'll want to run server and LVM, but for now I'm just going for simple. The box is an AMD 4800+ with 3 SATA hard drives. It previously ran Windows, but I've made every effort to blow all HD contents away and start fresh.The big picture problem is that I can't reliably get the system to boot from the SATA drives. After my first install of the 64-bit 11.04 from CD, it installed OK and booted fine. I then subsequently reinstalled the next day and the troubles began.

I've been booting into the "trial mode" from CD, then attempting to reinstall from there.After getting all the way through the setup, it gets to the grub install. It says that it can't install grub. It then offered to install it on the other /SD'x' devices (/SDA, /SDC, etc...) but failed to install grub there as well.Thinking there may have been leftover state from a previous install, I've tried blowing away all the contents of the 3 hard drives. However, I can't do that either. Running the "disk editor" from within the "trial" mode, any attempt to erase a partition is met with a failure, with the error message "daemon is inhibited".

So the two big questions I have are:1) Why is the grub install failing, and how can I deal with it?2) Is there some expectation of what the drives look like prior to an install? And if so, how go I get them into that state? I'm lost on how to "uninhibit the daemon"If it's helpful, I grabbed the relevant section of the log file that has what looks like more detailed errors from the grub install.