Hey, I could really use some help. I trying to install suse 9.1 and when i'm about to install it and all that, it starts to recognize the devices and usb devices and everything...well, when it's done with that it shows everything that it recognized in the right column. Well...it says at the top "click this and this to change settings"(obviously i don't remember exactly what it says).

well it said "click"...so i was like.."uhh..can yo do that while it's installing?"..cause i have never known that the mouse was accessable during this process, and I atempted to click, that didn't work...well...i tried to toggle over with the arrow keys...still nothing..the only thing that will work is the "accept" key (F10) and the "cancel key" (F9)...when i accept, it shows the red window warning me that i should make sure all of the settings is the way i want them and stuff...and i'm like "okay, okay...let's install"...and it shows 2 options: "Yes, Install Suse 9.1"(F10) and "NO,Cancel Installation"(F9)...so i chose Yes(F10) and nothing happend...

the only thing that i was allowed to do was cancel it....what's the problem?...can someone help me out?

I'm not clear on where you are in the installation process...

Is this SuSE Personal or Professional edition??? What is your system like???
I've installed SuSE 9.1 a number of times on my machines and others' machines... but I do not know where you are,...

okay...i guess i'll start off by telling you my hardware and stuff...i have a 500mhz processor, 20gb hardrive, and 256mb of ram....i think that covers that part...and i have suse 9.1 personal..and the part where i'm at in the installation process is where it shows what suse has recognized on my system..and it gives you the option to change the default settings, and it is also the part where you say if you want to install suse or not, and it only lets me decline the installation..it doesn't allow me to accept it...i'm probably being real vague about this..but i'm not exactly experienced in linux...so i apologize. this is the only way i know how to describe where i'm at right now

1. What if any other operating system is already installed? Windows? What is the current disk usage of Windows?
2. Running through the install and noting the exact error messages before failure would help.

i have windows xp installed already...i have about 3.75gb of free space...and there was no error...it just doesn't allow me to do anything except cancel the installation

I started up my download version of Suse 9.1 personal. Yes, my mouse works at the confirm settings screen. Is your mouse or keyboard a USB device?

3.75GB is not much free space. Linux needs to be installed to it's own partition. It is not a program that installs within Windows. A normal Linux install wants to create a small swap partition and at least one other "root" partition for the OS installation. Looking through the docs it seems 9.1 can resize FAT partitions. I have never needed to use this option so do not have first hand knowledge of it. I could be incorrect here, but is appears 9.1 does not resize NTFS partitions which are the norm for XP. Also, since you have under 4GB of disk space, that does not leave much room to keep some space for Windows and install LInux.
I think that the Suse install program is unable to resize your NTFS partition and is nicely refusing to delete your Windows partition by default.
You might be able to confirm this or not if you check the partitioning option on the set up screen you were on. Either tab or an alt key combo may get you there.
If you "cancel" or "abort" your way out of the install program there should be no harm done by looking.

no, my mouse isn't a usb mouse...but thanks for the help...i have an extra hardrive that doesn't have anything on it and is freshly formatted...so i'll just use that...it's a 6gb one...that should do, right? thanks for your help

6 GB of HD space should be alright for SuSE 9.1 Pers.

SuSE will probably install Grub or Lilo on the primary drive though, and allow you to select the OS you want to boot in,...

6 GB is small though in terms of setting up a FAT32 partition to move data back and forth. It will get you a baisc Linux system though.

ehh...it popped up an error and it wouldn't let me do it...i'd tell ya what the error was if i remembered it, but i don't..haha, oh well...i'll get my brother-in-law to help me out with all this stuff...he knows almost everything there is to know when it comes to computer technology..but anyway, thanks again

The 2nd drive is a great solution.
You will probably need to set up the partitions for Linux manually.