Macbook Pro 17 core 2 duo, will not allow clean install of SL

I just bought a macbook pro, 17" core 2 duo intel w/2 gigs RAM, 149GB hd space, firmware completely up to date, on an estate sale. SMART status of hard drive is verified. It originally had OS X 10.4.11 installed on it, trying to update to SL.

Went through all the steps to erase/repartition the hard drive, including zeroing out the new partition. 1 partition, GUID, extended w/journaling. No errors found on the hard drive.

I have snow leopard family pack with one or two licenses remaining, so this is a retail copy of the OS. Trying to do clean install, keep getting message, "Mac OS X cannot be installed on this computer." Spoke with Apple tech services, they confirmed that computer hardware is completely compatible with snow leopard.

I NEED HELP GETTING THIS THING UP AND RUNNING! Just trying to do a simple upgrade from OS X 10.4.11 that came on the notebook to snow leopard so I can do one or two more software updates.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6), Clean install failing