External HDD USB Install/LiveCD Hangup.

I've had a laptop with no internal hard drive for about a year now, and having no experience with Linux-based systems, I decided to give installing a distro on a spare external a try. Having a laptop would be nice, and windows wouldn't even be able to work on an external, so it seemed like an obvious choice.

Unfortunately, there have been some pretty severe hang-ups. I was only able to get to the PinguyOS installation screen once, and (embarrassing as it may be) I honestly can't remember how I managed to do it.

I apologize for the vague laptop's specifications, but it was given to me and there's no way for me to figure out specifics without opening it up and going from there.

It's a Gateway W340UI.
An ATI Radeon graphics card,
An Intel Celeron M Processor,
and at least 512MB of RAM if not more.


I start with the choice of booting from a LiveCD, a 16GB thumbdrive, or (I've tried, but I'm not sure if it's a valid method.) booting straight from the external itself.


Then I almost always get to this screen:


From there (assuming my external HD is plugged in, not sure if it makes a difference with some options), any option besides memtest and hd takes me to this wonderful splash screen where it will hang indefinitely, not spinning or doing anything for hours:


Once after unplugging my external and attempting to boot from the LiveCD I burned at the slowest possible speed, (tested 2 different ones too to make sure it wasn't the CD) I ended up here, where it hung up as well:




I appreciate any help, I like how PinguyOS looks and I'd certainly enjoy getting it to work and using it before possibly trying something else. My best guess is it's something to do with the external HDD or the graphics card, but I don't have much to go on myself.