problems installing over Suse 10.1
 

Has anyone here had difficulty installing any other Linux distro, over Suse 10.1 which has been installed on their computer as a dual boot with Windows?
I wanted to have a go with the new Mandriva 2007, with its apparent ly brilliant 3d desktop, but the install crashed shortly after starting with an "initiation failed" error. I then tried Fedora, Edubuntu and Ubuntu with the same result. I know for definate that the Fedora 6 DVD worked on my computer before.
There is definately no problem with my hard drive or my DVD/CD drives and everything works fine on Suse and Windows.
The only Linux distribution that IS WILLING to install over Suse 10.1 is Suse 10.1 !!!! :-)
Does anyone have any idea what my problem is??

My disc configuration is as follows:

[quote]
Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10337 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 547 4135288+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 * 557 6274 43228080 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3 6275 6288 105840 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 6289 10337 30610440 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 6289 8320 15361888+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 8321 8591 2048728+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda7 8592 10337 13199728+ 83 Linux
[\quote]

Any help from some Linux expert out there would be great!!!

thanks,
tim

p.s. I completely reinstalled Suse 10.1 to make sure that there was no problem on my hard drive. It installed fine again, but for some reason didnt detect my sound card this time. I now have a broken Suse and no way of installing anything else :eek: :)

If you are sure that the problem is being caused by Suse, try loading a live cd such as gparted and delete the Suse partitions.

Would I have to reinstall my Windows MBR in the process. I don't have a windows boot disk to reinstall this?

thanks,
tim

Probably not (no guarantees, tho).

If you installed in a typical manner, Windows is not on your MBR, Grub is (or it is probably blank if you installed grub on the partition where /boot lives).

Since windows is chainloading out of grub, you should be able to zap your suse partitions using any partitioning tool (gparted is very cool, but if you are just frying partitions, partitionmagic, partition commander, qparted, or whatever partitioner exists on any live CD or DVD like knoppix should work fine).

When you install the new distro and configure your bootloader (hopefully grub again, IMO) be sure to include a chainloader entry for hda1 or hda2 (I don't know which one you have windows installed on, presumably hda2).

HTH,

J

Used gparted. Formatted Linux Partitions. Grub no longer worked. Found a Windows boot CD from my laptop which had FIXMBR command to fix master boot record. Did that.
STILL only SUSE cd recognised. Did a CHKDSK to make sure hard drive was working properly. No problems. I still cant get Linux distros other than Suse to mount.

Ubuntu, for example, gave the error:

Not syncing: VFS unable to mount root FS on unknown block (1,0)

Any ideas anyone!!!!!

Thanks,
Tim

post your /boot/grub/menu.lst

also what kernel version are you running within ubuntu and other distros?