Well to start out I just bought the SuSE 8.1 Professional and have been installing it on my home network. I am new to Linux and am still trying to figure out all the basics. I successfully installed it on my main machine and have had no problems what so ever. It consists of the the following hardware:

MotherBoard: Shuttle AK35GT
Processor: AMD Duron 1.2 Ghz
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 4 MX 440 SE
Harddrives: Maxtor 40 Gig - OS Windows XP
Maxtor 20 Gig - OS SuSE Linux 8.1 Pro

Everything was auto detected on installation and everything went smoothly.
I select Linux in the GRUB bootup and it runs the initialization sequence then it loads the login screen.
I login with my user name and password and it takes me to the Desktop.
Everything is good on this machine.

My other machine has the following hardware.

MotherBoard: MSI K7T Turbo2
Processor: AMD Duron 1.2 Ghz
Video Card: nVidia GeForce 4 MX 440 SE
Harddrives: Maxtor 40 Gig - OS Windows XP
Quantum 20 Gig - OS SuSE Linux 8.1 Pro

The installation seems to be running properly with the following exceptions. During the install program it does not auto detect the video card. So I have had to select to install the nVidia kernal in the setup list. Later in the install I have the option to select the video card and configure it. So I chose the correct video card. After installation is complete it reboots and runs the initialization sequence and then it stays at that screen (not a different login screen) and asks for login and password. Then it stays there. It is not loading the Desktop. It is only running in text mode and not the graphical mode.

Any Suggestions?

In the text mode:
can you run startx to get into KDE?

If not: reboot and login as root in safe mode.
( this is easier than: init 3 )

run sax2
run SuSEconfig
run startx

If above attempt fails instead of sax2 you can run xf86config

Be prepare on your hardware, especially monitor refresh rate (hirizontal and vertical)


Good luck and have a lot of fun ;-)

Well the good news is I did get it to work. So I want to thank you for your help. The only problem now is to get it to save the settings. lol

Here is what I did. I logged in as root(superluser) and it started in text mode. I had to run the command init 3, after that I was able to run SaX2.
I ran SaX2 a few times and it only worked when I let SaX2 load the settings that is thought was best for my system. After that it returned to text mode. I had to run init 5, this is the graphical interface login. I was able to login and it loaded the desktop and all the other items. I then ran the YaST Online Update and loaded the updates thinking that this would help. So I restarted and it would not start with the graphical interface. I will work on it more.

Thanks Again