Okay, I have an update.

I just tried to boot the installation again, this time with -v cpus=1. I tried this twice and both times it halted with "Still waiting for root device."

After this, I tried just booting with "-v" again. This time it actually seemed to boot... I got a fancy GUI with a language selection dialog. Only problem is, neither my mouse nor my keyboard seemed to be working. The mouse wouldn't move at all, and trying to TAB to the button didn't seem to work (and hitting Num Lock seemed to do nothing).

Both my mouse and keyboard are PS2--will this be causing any issues? I thought I read somewhere that you shouldn't have any problems as long as the mouse & kb were both USB, or both PS2....?

Thanks again :-)