hi,

I'm trying to install SuSe 9 on my desktop machine and it stuck on formatting partitions screen, says 100% but nothing then. I have wait 20 min just to see if it completes or not. The computer is not stuck but nothing happens, just the waitting clock. If I press Ctrl + Alt + F2 it goes to console which seems to work. Could somebody tell me what the problem can be.

thanks

It could be any number of things:

- if you have a brand-spanking new computer, it might have a chipset which is not fully supported. Try using the safe mode installation
- bad HDD cable?
- bad HDD?
- Bad RAM? Use the memory test option from your boot CD (or DVD) to run Memtest86.
- is the computer a really, really old computer? Wait just a little bit longer to see if it completes the format process

If all else fails, I've seen this happen due to corrupt master boot records. In those cases you may need to do something like:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

(I am assuming you're using a PATA/EIDE drive and it is installed as the primary on the first channel)

But keep in mind that this is destructive and remove all partitions on your hard drive.

I recommend doing the partitioning work as a separate step prior to the installation, rather than a step within the installation. Just use your favorite partitioning utility and you should be good to go.

As an aside, "SuSE 9" is a little unclear. I'd suggest using either SuSE v9.3 or 10.0 Good luck with it

So, my computer is a new one Dell Optiplex gx620 with a 64 bit architecture. I am trying to install SuSE Enterprize 9 64bit arch. With SuSE 10 Desktop works fine but I'm stuck on formatting screen with 9. Mem, proc, hdd was already tested and work fine.
I'm using 160GB SATA and on BIOS: compatible mode.

Thank you for your help.

try adding apm=off and barrier=off to the command line options at the installer start up window.