Please Help!! Installer is boggling my brain!

To start, I have a MacBook Pro 2.16. I'm trying to install drivers for a new recording control surface. However, every time I try to open it, I get an error message that reads "The file /volumes/M-audio FireWire/M-audio FireWire.mpkg cannot be opened (-43)."

The problems not over... I read through some forums and saw that I may have a problem with installer. So I booted from the startup disk and tried to repair installer, but the computer just sits there and makes the sounds of disk writing for an absolute eternity.

Any ideas on either of these problems?

Is the M-Audio installer on a disc? If so, try and download the driver instead, it could be that.

Also, you could run Disk Utility and verify your permissions, just to see if it throws anything up. Run it from your install discs though.

Yeah, I've been trying to verify permissions, but it keeps locking up on me. Whether I'm verifying or repairing, it locks up and I can't to anything but manually power off. That's actually worrying me a lot more than the drivers now that i think about it.

Ok, have you tried to verify the HD then? If that quits on you, or locks up, let us know, there are other ways.
How old is the MBP btw?

I purchased it in February of 2007.

Oh, I might should mention that I upgraded to Snow Leopard a few days ago.

Ok, so I reinstalled Snow Leopard hoping that would solve the problem. Afterwards, I went into disk utility to verify permissions and it locked up again.

Ok, then lets try an FSCK, PRAM reset and NVRAM reset to see if that helps.
Need to know how? Take a look at my post here:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-notebooks/166880-powerbook-g4-needs-life-saver.html

Ok, I managed to get the Permissions verified and fixed. Now I'm back to my original problem trying to install the m-audio software. Same error message. I guess I'll try Downloading from the website.

Let us know how you get on please.

Ok, so to catch you up to speed, when I initially was able to fix permissions, I did it in normal boot through disk utility. It was able to fix one permission, however there was one more that said something to the effect of "SUID permission has been modified and will not be repaired." That of course is paraphrasing. I googled that message and the mac support website had that listed as normal.

So what I'm doing now is attempting to repair permissions from the OS disk to hopefully catch something it didn't catch previously. Though it seems to be locking up again.

I'm going to try your PRAM and NVRAM bit and see if that helps anything. I really appreciate all your help.

No worries. Always run Disk Utility from install discs, as doing it from the HD "on the fly" cannot fix a multitude of problems.
Ultimately it could be a failing HD here. You don't say which install discs you have, but you may have access to hardware test, so it may be worth running that too.

The install disk I have is the Mac OS X Leopard Disk from the box set. Could it be a problem that I went straight from Tiger to Snow Leopard?

Hmm. That may well have caused an issue, although it is known to work.
Sadly there is no hardware test on the Leopard DVD. It was only on machine specific discs. If that's the ones you have then you could try that (hold down "D" on start up).

Well, I don't have the correct disks handy to me at the moment. Is there a way to diagnose the hd otherwise?

FSCK should check the structure. Disk Utility will verify and repair it, but it won't necessarily detect a hardware fault, if at all.
Short of that, no not really.