Prestashop hangs on last step

[inntoon]

I had PS (1.5) running fine on Liquid Web shared hosting. Last afternoon, I made a few tweaks to the CSS, added a few graphics and got it ready to show a client.

 

At the client meeting, all I got was 500 errors. The error log shows a lot of "files not found" that are clearly there.

 

So, I wiped out the files, reinstalled, built a new database and started over from scratch.

 

Now the installer hangs on the last step:

 

The bar is at 23%. The step is "create default shop and languages." The error message is: "An error occurred during installation."

 

I have tried multiple times to change user names, passwords, clear the database, etc.

 

When I look through Prestashop's error logs, I get:

 

[02-Aug-2012 14:10:33 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'PrestaShopException' with message 'Shop not found' in /home/snapsels/public_html/classes/shop/Shop.php:345

Stack trace:

#0 /home/snapsels/public_html/config/config.inc.php(89): ShopCore::initialize()

#1 /home/snapsels/public_html/index.php(28): require('/home/snapsels/...')

#2 {main}

thrown in /home/snapsels/public_html/classes/shop/Shop.php on line 345

 

In the server's error logs, I get:

 

[Thu Aug 02 10:42:55 2012] [error] [client 99.73.135.11] File does not exist: /home/snapsels/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://snapseller.com/install/index.php

[Thu Aug 02 10:36:28 2012] [error] [client 99.73.135.11] File does not exist: /home/snapsels/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://snapseller.com/install/index.php

[Thu Aug 02 10:32:09 2012] [error] [client 99.73.135.11] File does not exist: /home/snapsels/public_html/500.shtml, referer: http://snapseller.com/install/index.php

[Thu Aug 02 10:31:25 2012] [error] [client 99.73.135.11] File does not exist: /home/snapsels/public_html/favicon.ico

[Thu Aug 02 10:31:25 2012] [error] [client 99.73.135.11] File does not exist: /home/snapsels/public_html/favicon.ico

 

It seems that Prestashop is not finding some of the files that clearly exist.

 

Thanks for any assistance you can give. I don't know why the software stopped working last night, but the PS logs suggest that the software is choking on something.