Installing openSuSE 10.3

[Tony Norton]

Hello all,

this my first venture into using anything but MSDOS and it's Windows derivatives, so I am an absolute dog-faced, snotty nosed beginner.

I downloaded the openSuSE 10.3 ISO and, using "PowerISO 3.9" burned it to a DVD. The DVD booted up no problem so I set about installing to a partition on my USB harddrive, which seemed to go OK, until I tried to boot and found that Linux had put something on my C: drive which stopped my system booting at all. I guess it wasn't hungry because it got to "GRUB" and crashed out. Luckily my system is set up with a small Windows98 (FAT32) partition, with my WinXP Pro (NTFS) on a larger partition, (all my data and workfiles are on a daisy-chained second harddrive), so it was relatively easy to re-do the Win98, modify the 'boot.ini' file, and I was back to square one.

No point in going that route again so I dug out an unused 16GB harddrive, disconnected my usual Win harddrives, and set about installing openSuSE
10.3 on the spare drive. Everything seemed to go fine, working my way down the steps in the column on the left, it downloaded all the updates/patches etc until....it got to the very last step and it must have been very near the end when the top third of the screen went 'splat', a solid white band across it and an error message, which, I know, I should have written down, but didn't, but I seem to remember something like "Yast" or similar. I did try to boot from unfinished installation, but got exactly the same screen.

Did I do something wrong, or was I just unlucky?

Basically my PC spec is:-

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
System Manufacturer VIA Technologies, Inc.
System Model KT400-8235
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 6 Stepping 2 AuthenticAMD 1.6Ghz
BIOS Version/Date Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG, 19/07/2004
SMBIOS Version 2.2
Windows Directory D:\WINDOWS
System Directory D:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version =
"5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-215"
Total Physical Memory 768.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 240.63 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 2.21 GB
Page File D:\pagefile.sys

and my DVD drive: -

Drive H:
Description CD-ROM Drive
Media Loaded No
Media Type CD-ROM
Name SONY DVD RW AW-G170A
Manufacturer (Standard CD-ROM drives)
Status OK
Transfer Rate Not Available
SCSI Target ID 1
PNP Device ID IDE\CDROMSONY_DVD_RW_AW-G170A____________________1.71____\5&381B986F&0&0.1 .0
Driver d:\windows\system32\drivers\cdrom.sys (5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-215, 48.38 KB (49,536 bytes), 23/08/2001 12:00)

If there's anything else you need to know to be able to help please let me know.

Thanks in advance for any assistance rendered.

Best regards

Tony Norton

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Something is wrong with installation media only. Boot up from installation DVD again and select Installation. Select update/upgrade in next options list. Click on next next next unless installer prompt for reboot. Check if it sorts out problem.

In case it doesn't work, check this link. Instructions are same for all versions of SUSE.

[Tony Norton]

Hi and Welcome !

Something is wrong with installation media only. Boot up from installation DVD again and select Installation. Select update/upgrade in next options list. Click on next next next unless installer prompt for reboot. Check if it sorts out problem.

In case it doesn't work, check this link. Instructions are same for all versions of SUSE.

Hi Casper,

thanks for responding. I'll give that a go.

Do you know if OLDCPU's comments re CDs apply equally to DVDs? Does it matter if I use a rewritable DVD?

Thanks

Tony N

[devils casper]

Instructions ( Comments ) are same for both CD and DVD. You can use re-writable DVDs. Thats not a problem but make sure to burn .iso image as Image only and do not create bootable DVD explicitly.