After 11 hours of waiting I finally managed to finish downloading the Opensuse 10.2 live DVD from the official opensuse.org website.

I then proceeded to burn the DVD-RW disk that I have with aDVD-RW/CD burner on a windows xp computer (my laptop which runs SUSE 9.3 doesnt have a DVD burner).

I used cheetah DVD burner and it went through the whole process and then ejected the DVD like it was done. I popped it into my laptop and it didnt run the DVD.

I then proceeded to burn the iso image using Nero and it still didnt work.

I then tried popping the DVD on the desktop which runs Windows XP and it still didnt work.

Is there some sort of special way that I have to burn the Live DVD for Opensuse?

I have burned live knoppix CD's and never had this problem.

Did you make sure the md5sum matched ?

at the Opensuse download page there is a link to the md5sums,
after your file is downloaded check md5sum for it Sorry but I have no clue as how Winblows does it but in the bash shell you just type md5sum "filename" and in a little while it gives it to you.

Since you have previously burned CD's, I assume you know how to burn an .iso as a bootable rather than a data disc w/ the "Winders (tm)" software you mention.

The other possibility is that the optical drive can't boot a DVD or can't boot a DVD/RW. Have you ever successfully booted this box from either?

No I have only booted from a CD.

The only time I used a DVD was on my laptop whenever I got the install Disks from novel for SUSE 9.3.

but I dont know if those work the same way.

oh well if it doesnt work I guess I will just download the CD's

In other words, you can confirm that is does boot from a commercially pressed DVD, but not from a home burned DVD/R or DVD/RW.

as i'm searching for answers i saw ur post. quite similar to mine. same as you waited for 6 hrs downloading the iso dvd. but unfortunately, when i tried to install. 1st the dvd was able to boot but when it came to the installation mode(where u have to select). i selected "new installation" and it showed initializing catalog, then it poped "Failed to initialize the catalog. Try again".
i selected try again and selected the dvd-rom, and it poped "Insert opensuse 10.2 CD1".

any clues?

Or the disk image is somehow corrupted at the mirror?

p/s: hope you don mind i post it here.

did you ever resolve this? I've got the same problem...

I never resolved this problem and went ahead and downloaded the 5 install CD's.

I then installed SUSE 10.2 on my computer. It looks great and has many improvements but unfortunately it has some weird bugs. I had problems with removeable media(for example I would save one thing on one computer on my thumb drive and take it to the next and the files would not open properly). I had problems with the sound card and a few other minor problems.

I do want to say that all these things worked 100%b with SUSE 9.1 and 9.3 my frustration got to the point that I decided to look for an alternative.

I have been faithful to SUSE ever since I got SUSE 9.1 which was my introduction to linux but due to SUSE 10.2 I decided to make the switch over to Ubuntu edgy.


I hope all these bugs get fixed especially the removeable media one in SUSE 10.3 maybe then I might switch back to SUSE.

I hope you guys have better luck with it.