I've been dual booting SuSE 9.1 and XP Pro for sometime now.
Wanting to upgrade to 9.3, I followed directions found on a linux forum website, booted SuSE>yast>partitioning and tried to format the linux partitions.
the format went to 80% and stopped. I left it overnight, and sure enough it was still at 80%
i couldn't get anywhere from where I was, so I restarted the computer.
upon restart i get:
i can't get passed this. so i put in my windows application restore disk in and i get a notice saying Disk 1(4353534mb 7296c 255h 63s) appears to have partitions created using a different drive geometry(16h, 63s). i hit okay then it says it can't find the drive image that is on my harddrive.

i don't mind losing everything on my computer, as long as i can get suse 9.3 installed. when i put my 9.3 disks in, it probes my hardware and i get this message:

"No hard drive found for this installion" or something.

Under Partitioning it reads: 'No automatic Proposal possible. Specify mount points manually in the 'Partitioner Dialogue'

When i go to partition it says something about putting in an update disk

i have noo idea where to go from here. i have no use of my computer, i can't get into suse 9.1 or windows.

i messed something up, and have no clue how to fix this.
if anybody can offer me any help, it'd be greatly appreciated.


-mark

Yes and no ...
You messed up by blowing away the Linux partitions - this means the grub stage files the message mentions.

Says a lot about having a separate /boot partition where grub can live safely away from potential deletion.
Presuming you don't try re-formatting that as well ...

For the rest, this shouldn't happen - and might be a mongrel to recover (successfully) from.
Try getting into the CMOS, and updating the drive option to "LBA" - these days it's probably "auto".

Might get you around it - else see if Knoppix will mount the XP partitions, and start backing it all up ...
If you're happy to lose it all, just use Knoppix to get fdisk to delete and recreate all your partitions.
Again, I'd do this after changing the disk option to "LBA".

LBA is enabled in auto, the setting i have it in. if thats what you mean
when i put in knoppix and go to QTParter i get several partitions
two of them being Linux, hda3(1gig) and hda4((13gig)
what do i want to do with these? (i want to eventually install SuSE 9.3)
i have no internet access with knoppix, seeing how i can't get my wireless card installed. but i have another machine i can download programs to and transfer over if needed.

so yeah, i'm a newbie, so...

No, I'd suggest changing the option from "auto" to "LBA" - Windows and Linux seem to treat "auto" differently on occasions.
If you don't need any of the current data, I would be inclined to use fdisk to delete all the partitions, map out some new ones and start from scratch.
Open a terminal (the screen icon on the bottom bar), enterPlenty of how-to's on the net for fdisk.

Don't worry about being a newbie, there are a heap of errors in software you used that shouldn't be there.

what kind of partitions do i need?

when i put my suse 9.3 disk in, and abort the installation since it can't find a hard drive, it brings me to this blue screen where i have a bunch of options.
linuxrc i think is its name?
when i select the "hard disk and memory" option, it only lists my dvd player, and not my hard drive.

but under bios it recognizes my hard drive.

no clue how to fix this.

i'm trying to avoid losing all my information.

in knoppix, if i make 2 partitions;1 has to be linux-swap i believe, double the size of my ram..what would the other one be?

still don't think linux would recognize the partition.
ugh, so friggin lost

This is looking ugly.
I'd be betting that hda3 was your old swap, and hda4 your old root (/) partition.
These would be fine for a new Linux.
No good to you though if the installer can't find them.

If you want your data, I'd start saving it from Knoppix.

After that, as I said use fdisk (from Knoppix) to blow everything away, and start again - put XP back on first if you need it.
There are a million ways to setup the disk, but allocating 1 Gig for swap, and 13 for root should work.
Enter the following commands to create the swap, and build the root as ext3 (from a Knoppix terminal)(presuming you created /dev/hda3 and /dev/hda4 again - adjust as required).
Don't let Suse create the partitions, but tell it to use the 1 Gig for swap and the 13 Gig for the root.

hi every one

i am really not a good user with linux os because i use windows more but i have used suse 9.3 32bit on my mates computer and i like it.

i have got it and i need to install it.

but for some reason i have a big problem.

when i click on agree and it check my hardware it comes up with an error message saying

"ERROR no hard disks were found for the installation please check your hardware!"

the i click ok.

then under partition in the installation screen it says,

"No automatic propasal possible. specify mount points manually in the 'partitioner' dialogue."

ok fair enough it cant do it automatically, and i do know how to specify a mount point as i have done this previously when i was installing redhat.

but when i click on the partition section it says,

"No disks found please use the update cd for installation"

now does anybody know what this update cd is and where i can get it?????
this is telling me that i dont have a harddrive in my laptop.

i dont know what is wrong.

by the way i have got the dvd version of suse 9.3.

and my hard drive is in 2 partitions.

my boot C: which is 26.5gb NTFS for windows xp home

and my backup D: 29.5gb EXT 2 (i converted it from NTFS to ext 2 to see if suse will find it which never

worked)

i hope someone can assist me on this,

any help will be very much appreciated

thanks alot

kaiser

guess what we can forget about installing suse 9.3 for now,

because i was using powerquest partition magic to format my backup up drive from and ext 2 to NTFS, because i wanted to delete redhat.

i did that and it said to restart my computer for changes to take effect, i did that and it came to a blue screen which started the process of changing it from ext 2 to ntfs but in the middle of that process my computer unexpectedly restarted and then it came to the exact same screen as


icepacks, the first poster, exept the numbers of the upper and lower memory were abit different

loading grub stage 2" then a new screen that says
GNU GRUB version 0.94 (637k lower/ 345353k upper memory)
[minimal bash like line editing is supported. for the first word, Tab lists...]
grub>

please please help me someone my dad bought this laptop for me and if he finds out he will kill me

thank so much.

yeahh soo...any help for the both of us?


and could i, loading into knoppix, delete everything off my hdd?

what command would i need for that.



and then put the suse disk in(since i don't have a windows disk or care to have one right now) and pray that it recognizes my hdd this time?