Hi,

I have tried to install SUSE 10.3 linux on my computer( P4, 3.06Ghz, D102GGC2 motherboard, ATI Radeon Xpress 200) . The installation itself went smoothly.. However the linux OS itself refuses to boot. When i try to boot it, the boot process goes on for a while then at the end my screen goes completely black and thats it. I tried the failsafe then, but even then it did not work.It seems that my motherboard or its Bios is not compatible with any linux version. I then updated my BIOS. Following the Update the failsafe version of SUSE10.3 boots.( i.e i am able to access the system via the command prompt.) But the GUI( X window) still does not show up. any suggestions...??

When you attempt to boot 10.3, do you see the default splash screen when booting into the normal mode, or is this where the screen goes black? The splash screen hides some of the boot parameters, so if you press the ESC key on your keyboard you may see some errors during boot. If it is just a problem with starting your window manager, it may have something to do with the video driver for your platform. This is an integrated video card, correct? I've read numerous posts regarding troubles with installing various Linux distributions with systems with integrated graphics cards.

Yes when i try to boot 10.3 a default bright green coloured splash screen shows up. It offers me three options.

1) Open SUSE 10.3
2) Windows
3) Linux failsafe.

when i choose Linux failsafe i am successfully able to login at runlevel 3.
but when i choose the 1st option, the screen goes black after some initial processing.

hey there. right after you selected Open Suse 10.3, press esc over and over until it take you to text mode, instead of graphical mode, that way you can see where the boot hangs, and why doesn't boot. and let us know where it stops. or another option you have is, start in failsafe, and edit the startup log, and find the error.

the best of luck

can you give me detailed step by step instructions on how to edit the startup log and find the error.....?

Of course. The log is at /var/log/boot.msg . So once you get into failsafe just edit boot.msg by doing vi /var/log/boto.msg

Let us know what you find there. Good luck.

You might try booting into the safe mode and editing the /etc/inittab file. There is probably is a line like: id:5:initdefault:
Edit the file to change the 5 to a 3:
id:3:initdefault:

Then reboot and see if the first menu option will boot successfully into init level 3. If it does, then you have a video problem. Scanning the xorg log in /var/log might reveal a problem. Look for the lines starting with (EE). Most likely you need to install the propriety driver or your monitor settings are way of.

You can run YaST2 in the console as well. If you go to "Software -> Community Repositories" you can add a repository for ATI.
After installing an ATI driver, run "sax2".

If on the other hand, you don't reach run level 3 and get to a logon screen, the look at your boot logs. A kernel boot option may be needed to be able to boot up. Sometimes you need to provide different parameters for some kernel modules to get them to work. The /etc/modprobe.conf has some commented examples. A device may have a corresponding text file in the kernel docs ( kernel-doc package ) and possible IRQ and/or IO values may be given.

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If the safe mode boots into init level 3 but the first menu item doesn't, look at the options used for the safe mode. The safe mode has a number of kernel boot options. Use the list of kernel boot options that the safe mode uses. Try booting with only one or two of them. With luck, you may find a single kernel boot option that will allow you to boot up.