'manual' at the bootprompt. (Or choose it in the Lilo menu)
Then later on it will ask you if you want to use Yast 1 or 2
This won't help as it still uses the same kernel + modules, if the problem is that the usb module crashes on load. I got a dereferenced null pointer for a missing usb interrupt. As far as I remember the manual method will also run the hardware auto-detection, the panic will then just be a little later as with the boot-from-cd-1 method.
I just ran into the problem today myself, and I fixed it by doing it with manual and yast1.
Hm, I thought I tried that too, obviously I did something else. Thanks for pointing out that there is a way to install in case there isn't another interrupt free - I like a well-designed linux system! So far my usb interrupt is shared with the ne2k-pci module and the network is fine, though that may only be because I don't have any usb devices connected - fingers crossed. Btw I'd find it cool if the info with a step-by-step method to start up the installer without attempting to load usb.o was added to that sdb article about usb.o panicking (search usb, 7.2). Volker