Hello. I hope that someone here can help me. I have reasonable experience with using linux as an end-user, but not so much with configuration and installation - my previous installs always went smoothly ;<).

I've decided to install my old SuSE distribution on my new (< 6 months old) HP Pavilion w5163.
The installation stops pretty much at the start of the installation. The last few lines of the install log are:

Uniform multi-platform E-IDE drive revision 6.31
PCI_IDE: unknown IDE controller on PCI bus 00, device f9, VID=8086, DID=266f
PCI_IDE: Device 00:1f.1 not available because of resource collision
PCI_IDE: (idle_setup_pci_device Could not enable device
PCI_IDE: unknown IDE controller on PCI bus 00, device fa, VID=8086, DID=2651
PCI_IDE: chipset revision 3
PCI_IDE: 100% native mode on irq11
ide0: BM-DMA at 0x9000-0x9007, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0x9008-0x900f, BIOS settings: hdcio, hddio
hdd: Maxtor 6L200M0, ATA disk drive

Everything works under windows, are Linux requirements stricter? I checked everything under XP Device Manager, and didn't spot anything wrong.

Or should I just go out and buy the SuSE 10 distribution?

Many thanks,
Paul

The errors you are having are much to do with the proper chipset controlers. Much like a driver, the chipsets need controlers that are capable of running them. 8.1 has an older kernel and will therefore not have the built in support for newer chipsets.

In a nutshell, you definately need a distribution with the latest kernel in order to control these chipsets. IDE, USB, PCI and ATA controlers will not work properly until you get a new kernel.

Many thanks, much appreciated.

Paul