Suse 9.3 install locks up my machine
 

Hi,

Sort of a newbie question here. I am installing Suse 9.3.

I have a Maxtor Serial ATA drive, the ASUS A7N8X-e Deluxe mb, plus 2 ATA IDE drives: one a Maxtor 60 GB, and the other a 40 GB Western Digital. I am attempting to do a dual boot system. Windows XP Professional is on my SATA drive already. I want to install SUSE 9.3 onto my 60 GB ATA IDE drive. I will also format and use the 2nd ATA IDE for Linux.

However, when I attempt to install SUSE 9.3 my machine eventually locks up when it gets to the searching info file after scanning for hardware (I believe thats what it was). But, I have read through some forums and conclude that the new 2.6+ Kernel doesn't like the A7N8X-e software RAID. However, I also read that the older 2.4 Kernel didn't have a problem with the software RAID.

It seems to install fine if I disconnect my SATA drive. However, everytime I boot into Linux I don't want to have to disconnect that drive. I also don't care whether or not the Windows XP PRO NTFS SATA drive is seen by Linux. Likewise, I don't care whether or not Windows XP sees the ATA IDE drives.

I plan on extracting the linux boot sector and getting it to Windows. I'll put the linux.bin file on the root of Windows. Then, I will edit the Windows boot.ini file so that I will have the choice of choosing Windows or Linux during boot time.

Thanks!

I'm not looking for advice on doing a dual boot, but, rather, wanting any suggestions on how to disable the SATA drive on Linux's end since it seems that kernel 2.6 is having a difficult time with my mb, so, that it doesn't lock up upon boot or install, I appreciate it. I'm somewhat a hardware Linux newbie.

Thanks