I tried creating live usb again, using dd to put image on a drive (which was firstly zeroed using dd). The effect was exactly the same - system frozen on GParted.
I will try to provide some more details later - I'm able to to boot using text mode instead of graphic installer, but I can't mount any disk to store logs (each mounting attempt fails due to some missing files) and "less" does not work (it only displays as much text as fits on the screen (which is little at 640x480 resolution), without the scrolling possibility (prompt is displayed after first line of text).
Does recompiling the kernel with my laptop-specific drivers sound like reasonable option to fix this live-usb issue? I don't want to rush to it, if it's killing a fly with a cannon, but I definitely would like to get this working.