Hi there!

I am trying to convert all of my computers over to Linux, and had no problem with installing Yellow Dog on my iMac, but I am having a devil of a time trying to install Suse 7.0 Pro on my (s)Tinkpad R31 without completely reformatting the hard drive. When I try to repartition, fips 20 tells me that the HD cannot be locked and Partition Magic tells me that the HD number cannot be identified. There has to be an easier way than to wipe my HD of all of my (like-it-or-not) Windows files. I know there is a way to run Partition Magic from DOS, but I have long since lost my computer saave.
Ultimately, all I have succeeded in doing is frustrate myself.


Thanks for the help.

If you want to install Linux you have to reformat your hard drive, or at least the part you want to install linux on since linux doesn't run on fat or NTFS partitions. It sounds like you are wanting to completely remove Windows from your machine, if thats the case you should be able to just boot from your SuSE disk, when you get into the setup windows you will need to tell SuSE to use the entire hard drive, it should set up a "/" partition and a swap partition. it will than format your hard drive and proceed with the install.

Of course before you do any of this you will want to make sure everything and anything you will need from your windows install is safely baked up.