suSE 7.2 won't install!
 

hi.. I hope someone can help.. thanks!
I was attempting to install 7.2 onto my computer without deleting my windows 98. i got that warning that said i should defragment my hard drive first but stupidly i chose to ignore it. I continued with my installation but sure enough, right after starting to partition my hd, the installation ends with a red warning saying, "error occurred during installation." I rebooted and entered windows which works fine except that I can not defrag the hd (after 10% it says "detected change in system" or something like that, and would restart to 0% - it looped like this for hours) I also cannot run the "maintenance wizard". I assume this is all because it started to partition and then couldn't do it and now windows is detecting some weird pieces of the other OS. My question, then, is if there is anyway i can continue installing linux or do I have to do something drastic like reformatting my hd?
Thank you very much,
Abby

Not sure what you have?

Typically windows is using all disk space.

You must have an unused partition, or free space to create a partition on before installing linux.

The error you are seeing with scandisk is typical in windows, and I doubt if it's related to linux. Something may be running in the background.

You can try running scandisk from a command prompt, by booting to safe mode command prompt, or from a floppy.

the reason that you need to defrag your hard drive before re-partitioning is to save any data that might be on the extended parts of the hard drive. when you repartitioned, you probably destroyed some of this. chances are, it wasn't vital programs, but i wouldn't be surprised if you're missing a few files here and there.

you need to re-run whatever partition utility you used, and return the new partition you created for linux to the old windows partition. then, run defrag. after that, you can again try installing linux.

I'd say you probably best get some sort of tool like Partition magic and free some space for linux on your hard drive. PM could probably also get rid of your scandisk/defrag problems.

You should also try running defrag from the console in safe mode to make sure all the data is in the first part of your hdd so you can split your partition using fips something like that.