Installing with moniter

[Finlandboy]

first post

ok so i just got a free old hp pavilion laptop with a broken screen (cracked except for small section in the upper left had corner), i hooked it up to a monitor and figured i'd use it to mess around with linux,

now the problem is that i really want to install OpenSUSE linux, and when i get to the point were it finishes loading and is about to begin the install process, my screen turns black and 'Input not Supported' moves across my screen and i can't do anything after that but turn my pc off so my question is there anything i can do to install OpenSUSE, i figure it has something to do with the attached monitor, any clue? i'm a noob so help would be grateful

[gogalthorp]

How much memory does that old machine have??

Suse tends to use a lot 512meg min.

[Finlandboy]

pentium 4 pro. 2ghz, and 512 ram its not really that old but i consider it that way

[scrarfussi]

hmm it could be a hardware issue you might have to try another distro

[gogalthorp]

Well that is enough machine to work.

It may be that it is not recognizing the monitor. But more likely since it said input it is the keyboard or mouse that is giving it problems. You may try pluging in a regular mouse and see if that works. What version of Suse are you trying to install.

I had the same problem when trying 10.3 but i figured it was because I was using a KVM switch and it had problems seeing the mouse through the switch. I dropped back and installed 10.2 without problem. I did not have the time to fool around with it since I use the machine for business.

[Finlandboy]

well i was able to install mandriva (worked fine but seemed really slow) i also installed ubuntu 8.04 from the live cd but once installed i tried booting into it and the same 'Input not Supported' message came up??

and i did try installing QpenSUSE 10.2 but again the same demoralizing message popped up.................sigh