after the SuSE 8.2 disaster (see earlier post) i took the advice of my only reply and downloaded a newer distro, so i went for SuSE 9.1.
so i selected "Installation" and it all went fine. It said "cant make swap file" but i assumed i could put that in later, and installation continued. I believe the set up was something like this
/dev/hda - my hard drive name
/dev/hda1 - 20gb windows boot NTFS
/dev/hda2 - extended
/dev/hda3 - 1Gb swap file
/dev/hda5 - 40Gb windows programs NTFS
/dev/hda6 - 8.6Gb linux reiser
/dev/hda7 - 80Gb windows storage NTFS
so installation completes and all seems to have gone fine, GRUB works fine and my windows xp and partitions seem to be in tact. However, when i try to boot linux i get the usual loading bar, but once it completes it just moves onto a black screen, and my monitor power light flashes as though the pc were on standby.
confused, any ideas people?