I have Suse Linux 7.0 Personal edition. I am trying to install it on my WD 30gig drive. The drive has been divided into 3 partitions (done using Partition Magic 7.0), including the 1st partition as the Windows, 2nd as the LinuxExt partition, and lastly the Linux Swap partition.

However, when attempting to install Linux, Suse reports 4 partitions(claiming one partition of size 13.8 mb that has been unassigned). When I select the LinuxExt and the Swapfile partition to be used, it reports that these are not contiguous and must be at the top. Whatever, I am lost on that. I figured the remaining 13.8mb is what is holding back the installation, since it is not at the top, so I checked that also, but still get the same message, something about it being not contiguous.

Any ideas?

You might want to try repartitioning using SuSe program. Just be careful not to mess with your Windows partition!

I had figured it out,i combined the linux ex2 and swap partitions into one, and Suse ran fine then.

Curious thing tho, I can mount my Windows partition thru Linux... which I find curious... and explore the file system... doesn't seem to have messed up Windows so hopefully all will go well with that.

Linux can read and write to Windows FAT, FAT16, and FAT32 file systems without causing issues normally.

NTFS, used on NT, 2K, and I think XP is not fully supported nor endorsed.