btw, the error occurs during or at the end of "Adding Blocks" and does not complete the installation. This is during a clean and new install.

Is this on a local machine or a live server?

yes, live unix server hosted by networksolutions.com.

Talk to your server people and explain the problem as it seems the install is running out of resources, possibly a read/write problem if they are using spinning disk hard drives instead of solid state disks.
Another method is to carry out the install on a local machine and just export the database and files to the server..

thanks will try your former suggestion. I successfully installed on a local machine and tried to export, but that stalled when I ran into a few db privilege as well as timeout issues in mysql, and suspended that route for now thinking that a clean install might be a better option.

In that case the problem is your live server, consider moving to a better server.

Whilst a server could be under-resourced, the c5 web installer pushes the limit on server resources and often fails due to an individual step of the install process running out of resources. With every new version the size of a c5 grows.

A new webmaster's first impression of c5 is the install process, so it needs to be hyper-reliable even on a gutless server. The c5 installer really does need some work to divide the individual steps down so small that no-one runs into such problems.

I just attempted a fresh install on my Xampp localhost and after "block installation" it just died.
Made this post about it.
https://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/installation/config-doctr...

This is really annoying. I ran the install twice but came up short on both tries.

//Carsten