Reinstall failed. What now?

Odd things going on, like system freezing. Decided to reinstall mavericks to same disk. First attempt there was an error during the install. I tried again, but the install does not seem to be progressing, time changes back and forth. Has been doing this for about an hour.

Considering aborting and installing on another disk. Do I lose access to all my installed apps if I do that? Can I recover them. What should my action plan be? Do I have any other options?

Really am out of my element here and could use help.