The strange part, this happens on both my laptop(hp pavil, ati xpress 200, 2g memory) and computer(which actually had this exact copy installed on it previously), both return nearly identical results. The CD set has been well taken care of and is in perfect condition. (Do cds go bad? too hot to old idk? lol)

Initially everything looks cool, i get the install menu from cd1. If i don't choose text mode upon hitting install i get a blank screen. In any graphic mode, after about 3 minutes i get 5 little blue dots across the middle of the screen. Then about 3 minutes later i get an unreadable version of the gui installation screen. keys seem to be moving the selector around but o.0

In text mode the entire process seems to go great. SuSE manages to make it through cd2 (staroffice etc.) without any problems. I've actually got SuSE dual booting with xp right now. I get the same results without xp on the hdd as well.

After a text mode install & reboot, I get the lilo boot manager and choose either 'linux' or 'linux safe mode', it doesn't seem to matter which. It goes through boot process with a few minor things like "warning, writing log to read only disk.." "screenmap none done" "firewall unused" etc but most of these that I've read about seem to be nothing to worry about (how to get a reviewable boot log, I have to look into this ). After a few minutes i get to the shell "Login:" (not gui)

The shell seems to be ok. I can login to both user and root, bad passwords give errors. I can navigate the file system, view docs etc.
Yast2 seems to be intact and appears to to modify settings correctly (I changed the monitor settings as a test, laggy as ... tho). yast does nothing.
SaX2 is a different story. i get the little spinning text mode cursor then something about starting but eventually the computer freezes on a blank screen. sax does nothing.
StartX throws me an error, sry forgot to remember it, will post it in a few minutes.

I'm hoping someone else has had this problem, I've tried a bunch of general problem/fixes but most are repeats(yast2) or beyond what I can figure out through google(installing and configuring video card driver settings..)

I'm really interested in learning to use shell but would like the graphic part so I'm still able to view websites, pictures etc. Perhaps (if this will fix my problem) there's a beginners tutorial about installing everything needed for a gui from the shell+cd? Or do i just need to get an updated *nix os, ubuntu looks popular?

-- Sorry for such a long post --

Do CD goes bad ? Is one of youŕe questions .
Nothing has a eternal live .
One of the enemies is dirt or dust.
Second scratches is a other one.
Too much heat is the third
I can not remember it but does suse 8 not have a media check? If so use it to see if the install media is still correct.
If you burn the CDs youŕe self it lives generally shorter than professional made CD
And suse 8 is rather ancient now

Stuck on -3g- internet atm, so not enough bandwidth to get a proper distro.
All the suse cds are clean in the box and scratch free, tho they have probably been frozen a time or two in storage :/ the only other option on the installer cd is memory test.

Trying to get live DSL to work on a flash drive as well. Not having much luck with this either, something about kernel missing > boot: , still looking into this. I think i got the install/setup wrong..

Finally just gave up and set up puppy linux live on micro-sd All is good for not