Headaches doing fresh install of El Capitan

[kindofsleepy]

Hi all!

Having a bit of trouble installing El Capitan from a fresh install. I've tried literally just about everything I can think of and before I risk crossing the usage cap from my ISP(damn you ATT) I was hoping someone might have a suggestion I haven't thought of. This all stemmed from what I thought was a successful Photoshop upgrade but turned out to be anything but *groan

Things I have tried
1. Time machine restore - failed midway through without reason
2. restore from recovery partition - also failed midway through
3. net boot and Internet restore - failed without explanation
4. verifying and repairing ssd - also failed, though I have not tried it recently.

And finally, I'm in the middle of wiping the computer and trying a bootable usb with El Capitan (computer came with Yosemite), which unfortunately also fails ,but oddly enough I've managed to run into two different errors.

The first error has something to do with the Essentials.pkg file thats part of the installer and not being able to unpack that. This made me think it could be a bad download but after downloading El Capitan 2 times and still having trouble I'm not so sure.

The second error I've gotten appears to be a seg fault on one of the threads. I don't know enough about the output in the log to give a better description.

I don't believe this is hardware related - I've seen resolutions online that involved swapping memory chips, sadly mine is the "latest" 2015 version so I obviously can't do that. The hardware diagnostic returns no issues and the thing boots so I don't think it's the ssd. Verifying and trying to repair the ssd did fail at first, though I haven't tried it recently since completely wiping the thing.

I'm kinda at a loss at what to do - visiting the Apple store tomorrow in the hopes they have a known working bootable drive to try out but was just wondering if there might be anything I could try in the meantime, the sooner I can get back up and running the better.

 

[kindofsleepy]

UPDATE
Still no good news
But I did try some other things:

- did end up doing the verify/repair disk option in the newer El Capitan version of disk utility, all appears well,
- I tried grabbing the log after another attempt at net booting and pulling down Yosemite from Apple and the download appears to fail, rather than something being wrong with the install itself, though the reason is unclear as to why.

Also , a theory as to why I see 2 different errors when trying to boot and install from usb, I've tried alternating between the included "createinstallmedia" script bundled in the installer, as well as another method mentioned on macworld about manually copying files to the usb stick. When I do the apple approved method, I believe thats when I get the "Essentials.pkg" message and I get the seg fault when I try the other method.

 

[komatsu]

This stinks of a HDD which is failing. Forget about specific error messages at this stage.
A failing disk will cause the OS to throw out all sorts of weird error messages.

Run this on your disk.

https://www.volitans-software.com/apps/smart-utility/

 

[kindofsleepy]

This stinks of a HDD which is failing. Forget about specific error messages at this stage.
A failing disk will cause the OS to throw out all sorts of weird error messages.

Run this on your disk.

https://www.volitans-software.com/apps/smart-utility/

appreciate the suggestion! But doh! Looking at my original post I realized I completely spaced out and neglected to specifically mention I have a recent macbook pro with an ssd, it doesn't look like that would work.

Anyways it's in the shop now, hopefully just something simple.