I'm writing this in desperation, Windows is slowly killing me and i need to change my home pc os to Ubuntu 11.04 as soon as possible.

I created a USB flash drive to install ubuntu, twice, and both times they failed to begin install on restart of my pc. i read on another forum that you might have to change some boot sequence in BIOS but when pressing F2 to enter it didnt work. After a lot of cursing, I made myself an UBUNTU install cd and booted. To my excitement, it now displayed... try ubuntu and install ubuntu. i clicked install ubuntu which lead me to the preparing to install ubuntu display, i checked download updates while installing and clicked forward. The very next display is ' allocate drive space ' i assume there are meant to be options of drives provided but mine is just a blank box and underneath all the options to create a new partition table, add, change, delete and revert are all greyed out. There is a drop down menu labelled 'device for boot loader installlation' but the only option is /dev/sda. when i click install, a no root file system error comes up telling me to please correct from the partitioning menu.

I am extremely frustrated. please!! can anyone help me...