Hi all,

brand new to the Suse distro and decided to take the plunge today ... anyway I downloaded the 5 CD's and began the installation and everything was going fine untill I got to the hardware configuration at the end of the installation.

As soon as the install hits this point I've got about 10 seconds where the system tries to configure my hardware and then it locks up on a totally black and unresponsive screen. During the 10 secs mentioned above I can hit skip at the top of the screen or change but neither of them have any affect.

I'm installing it on a Dell Optiplex GX-110 P3 733 Mhz, 512 MB, Matrox video card (not the onboard video which is disabled in the bios).

I'm trying to install it and use the gnome desktop as I've really only used KDE to date. I'm thinking that this may be the problem as I have had some difficulties when trying other distros which use this desktop.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
TKP
...

"brand new to the Suse distro and decided to take the plunge today ... anyway I downloaded the 5 CD's and began the installation and everything was going fine untill I got to the hardware configuration at the end of the installation.

As soon as the install hits this point I've got about 10 seconds where the system tries to configure my hardware and then it locks up on a totally black and unresponsive screen. During the 10 secs mentioned above I can hit skip at the top of the screen or change but neither of them have any affect.

I'm installing it on a Dell Optiplex GX-110 P3 733 Mhz, 512 MB, Matrox video card (not the onboard video which is disabled in the bios)."

The installer is probably mishandling the video card. When you boot the install CD enter:
linux vga=normal
at the boot prompt. This will force the installer to use the video card in a very simple manner and might get it past the problem.


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Steve Stites

Well ... just to be thorough, I went back and installed Suse with the KDE desktop to see if there was going to be any difference ... exactly the same.

Get to hardware configuration and then ... toast

Thanks Steve ... I'm not sure where I can enter command line arguments with the boot CD but I'm going to take a look and see what I can come up with ...

I let you know

Thanks again
Todd

Update ... I tried reinstalling it using the boot options that Steve mentioned above and finally got it installed with the KDE desktop.

Thanks for the help!

Todd

I am having a very similar problem on my Averatec laptop. I had 9.3 Pro running great, but just *HAD* to upgrade... I get eveything installed just fine, but after the hardware configuration/initial login time comes around, the screen goes black and just hangs.

I can login in safe mode, but that's not cool. I tried the "linux vga=normal" boot option, and it didn't do a thing. I changed the default runlevel to 3, and tried startx manually, but it still just hangs. Any ideas?

*bump*

no one has anything?

"I can login in safe mode, but that's not cool. I tried the "linux vga=normal" boot option, and it didn't do a thing. I changed the default runlevel to 3, and tried startx manually, but it still just hangs. Any ideas?"

This could be a problem with your monitor configuration. Login in safe mode as root and run sax2. sax2 will lead you through configuring your monitor. When you finish with sax2 then reboot with:
shutdown -r now

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Steve Stites

still no go. every once in a while it will get to the KDE loading screen, but then the mouse freezes, whichindicates that everything else has too. I even went "oh, maybe it's just taking a while to load" and let it sit for about 30minutes :P

when I run sax2 from the command line, it brings up some semblance of x windows to run it, but when I am done, it goes back to the command line. From there startx and init 5 (I am still runlevel 3) both fail to work properly. blah.