If you have an active Internet connection, the next 2 screens are "advertisements" explaning the virtues and trying to get you to buy ".Mac". After that it's a: "you can do ALL this kind of stuff" with your brand new OS screen. Then you finally get to the Desktop.

If you don't have an active Internet connection, I think it skips the ".Mac" stuff...

But, back to your problem...
I've never been able to work past the account creation stall once it's happened. I've always had to completely re-install again (and it's usually worked best if I re-partitioned while I was at it...)

The simplist way to get past the problem is to have a KNOWN WORKING, fully supported LAN Adapter. Seriously, it's much easier to just completely disable your onboard LAN and spend $10-$20 on a PCI Adapter that uses a Realtek RTL8139 (10/100) or RTL8169 (Gigabit) chip! Like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156139

or: http://shop4.outpost.com/product/4434256#detailed
or: http://shop4.outpost.com/product/3887837#detailed

Just my 2 cents worth...

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Running both 10.5.8 and 10.6.4 on my stinking AMD/ATi machine...