LinuxQuestions.org - install linux 8.0

how did you get the 8.0 onto you HD in the first place ???

You must have the disc's. In my case, my xp came pre installed, and when I tried to let the SuSE to its own thing, it couldn't resize the tiny amount of "FAT32" formatted area on my hard disc.

Fortunately, the manufacturer had partitioned my 40 gig hard drive into 3 bits, boot for the windows, I don't remember what the second bit was called, and recover (the recover bit had the FAT 32 formatted bit).

I seem to remember that second bit (whatever it was called) was nearly 12 gigs in size, so I reformated that to FAT32 (instead of the default NTFS of xp). then just threw the SuSE discs (version 8.0 personal) into and followed the prompts. The only thing I had to do then was re-install it again because the minimal with office installation didn't have enough of the bit's on it to be able to configure my usb adsl modem. So on second attempt, I clicked on the custom (it's either custom or expert) installation and followed the prompts to select everything that I could.

It sorted and auto detected everything except the modem. it partitioned the hard drive, it put the bootloader in the right place and as a result I ended up with a full dual boot system on a single 40 gig hard disc.

The only snags that I have had with it are the modem cos I had to get my brother who know lots of linux to config for me and the sound device that I use at the moment - an AC97 onboard chip. that worked fine during installation but then caused the system to hang on reboot between windows and linux (durig the linux start up dialogue) when I had to use the cdroms to boot the linux and disable it in linux.

The books that came with my SuSE aren't much help cos they concentrate on the SuSE software and not on the linux side of things - I have also notice various snags with the translations from presumably the original german. I have also found them of little help when YaST " runs out of options (during my efforts to config my modem prior to getting my bruv to sort it).

www.suse.co.uk (or wherever) isn't much help unless you've got the installation support that comes with a genuine boxed version.

But, www.google.com/linux is f*****g excellent for places to go and look. plus you could do worse than search this site.

It isn't all plain sailing, but even a total linux nugget like me has picked up a mountain of additional info along the way.

P.S. if it's the partition thing that's causing you grief and you can't use the solution that I used, you might have to get yourself a copy of partition magic. I believe that it only starts to be a pain using that route when you use a hard disc over 80 gig in size - i think i'm right in saying that partition magic doesn't support disc's bigger than that