I have a clean system that has no operating system on it. I ran fdisk and erased all partitions so that I could configure them while installing SUSE 10.2. However I got the Grub error 22 error message. I even created one large partition for the entire hd and got the same message. Then I formatted the drive just to see if that would help, and it didn't. I still get the grub error 22 message when booting from the 1st installation disk.

I can boot from Knoppix so I know my hardware is working. What should I do next? This is my first time ever trying to install Linux. Most people with this message posting are dual boot, but I am not. So what should I do?

Thank you.

Error 22 usually indicates that GRUB is looking on the wrong partition. Then again, if that happened even with a snigle partition, this cannot be the problem. What kind of disk are we talking about: SATA or PATA? Any more disks in that computer, anything else that could have influence on disk numbering (such as a USB stick, optical drives, ...)?

Kinda odd - where in the install process does this error occur?
Probably you should try to manually install grub to mbr.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=511076

I only have a CDROM drive in the computer, no other hard drives. Both the CDROM and the hard drive show up in the bios and work when I boot with Knoppix. Theseate SATA drives. I do not have any USB flash drives in the machine.

Should I try the installation with the hard drive formatted? Should I fdisk and erase all paritions?

My problem is that I get this error message when I try to boot from Disk 1 of Suse 10.2

The disk works on other computers I have (I tried to boot with the same CD on another pc to eliminate the media from the equation.)

How can I install grub to the MBR without booting with Disk #1? Can I do it while running Knoppix?

What was on the disk before your used fdisk? The error 22 system is known to come up when a linux partition is not only formatted but deleted. Any chance you had a linux distro on there before you ran fdisk? And did you use linux fdisk or ms fdisk?

If you're booting the CD, it shouldn't even try the disk MBR. The fact that Knoppix works shows how it should happen. From Knoppix, do this from a terminal to erase the loader code in the disk MBR (might need root)Then try the install again.

This is what I was thinking - most others have solved this by cleaning mbr by their favorite method. eg. Sure - you can invoke grub-install (man grub-install). Of course syg00's suggestion will fill the mbr with zeros... possibly better.

When i entered:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda count=446 bs=1

I get the message
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda count=446 bs=1

Sorry to be so remedial. I am great with Windows but suck at Lunix so far.

Thanks for all the help you are giving me.

Sorry. The message I get is:

dd: opening '/dev/sda': No such device or address

I used ms fdisk. I have tried with an unpartitioned hard drive, a partitioned but unformatted hard drive, and a partitioned fat32 formatted hard drive.

o.k. from a terminal session (knoppix is fine) let's see the output from (that's a lower case ell, as in list)

got the message

Cannot open /dev/hda

Did you do it as root ???.

Not the first time. Here is the return I got the second time.

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40016019456 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System