So, I think I had a bad burn to the DVD. I wrote to another disc and now in the process of going through the installation process. I hope I got the HDD partitioning right...
I booted up my hard modded Xbox with the installer disc in the tray, but should the Xbox symbol remain static on the screen for over 10 minutes? The eject button is solid red also. I do not see any confirmation that the installation is occurring.