Hello all,

I've a SuSE 9.1 Personal instalation which I've already installed in my girlfriend's HP NX5000 laptop pc. All went well. Now I want to install it in my Compaq 2516 laptop (2.53Ghz, 512mb ram, 40b hd, ATI Radeon) and it locks as soon as the "Welcome" screen appears (that's about 2 seconds after booting) and it stays that way until I shut it down on the power button (ctrl+alt+del is locked too). The cd's are brand new and they read well on Windows. I've already waited up to 15 minutes but it seems that it's really stuck.

Any thoughts anyone?

My normal suggestion is to try the install with all USB/Firewire devices disconnected, but since this is a laptop, you probably don't have any connected.

Have you tried the install with ACPI off?

Hello Keith,

Yes, I tried with no devices attached. Still the same. Not even the caps/num lock keys respond. ACPI? Well, my BIOS is what I consider to be a really lame BIOS. It has very very few options, and nothing related whatsoever with ACPI. It only has basic HD setup, some system informations (the usual stuff), the Admin e User passwords area, boot devices priority and that's about it! No memory configs, no dma's, no irq's, no things to turn on or off, nothing! It's a really lame BIOS and doesn't have anything that really could help.

Thanks!

Somewhere in the install process is a screen where you can input additional kernel parameters if necessary...off the top of my head I can't remember exactly where.

Try acpi=off

This is recommended if your computer doesn't support ACPI, which might be the case, based on your previous post.

If it really is the ACPI, then the newer kernel versions should fix it... the acpi=off should only need to be used until you've updated the kernel to the newest version. I think.

Thank you guys for your time. I'll try to find where this acpi=off goes. Any ideas where it goes? maybe in a script file somewhere? It better be in a file somewhere... I don't mind having to burn a new install cd, because I'm unable do anything in the instalation process. It hangs as soon as the welcome message appears.

NO no no...
At the install prompt: List of install options... find the one that says install no acpi. if there isn't one, then highlight the install option and type acpi=off in the empty bar @ the bottom of the screen. then hit enter.

Ah well... ok... but the problem is that I can't reach any prompt at all... As soon as the cd boots, it shows up a "welcome" screen with the SuSe logo in the middle and that's it. I guess I better go and find another version...

Yeah I found it-
took me a second, I had to find my 9.1 personal cd :P
third option down.

Oh.

well, that doesn't seem to be an ACPI problem... that's still way to early AFAIK.
Could be wrong though.

After the "welcome" screen?

...I'm not sure, but logically it would seem that if there's a possibility of ACPI causing problems and an option to disable it, that it wouldn't be on by default. My honest opinion? Corrupted CD. have you installed off of this CD before?
if so, it still may be corrupted. my 9.1 Pro boot disk was way corrupted but it'd still boot and install from the hard drive. So to check for that put the cd in the cd drive with your OS running and browse to it. highlight all the files and right clcik to see the size of all the files. my 9.1 personal is: size: 698 MB (732,928,030 bytes) size on disk: 699 MB (733,917,184 bytes)
if you've got a working linux box, check the md5 sum. at the prompt type this: openssl md5 /dev/cdrom
it'll think for a second, and then do the same to your ISO for the CD. (openssl md5 your-personal-9.1.iso-path.)
if they're the same, then there's no difference between them, and hopefully the CD's ok. compare that # against the ISO's md5 sum on the SuSE FTP site.
Incidentally, the link is here: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/9.1...al-iso/MD5SUMS and just to speed it up, the checksum for the iso and the CD too I think is: c1973f88b5ec21d375c936a59dce097d
Hope that helps. if it's corrupted, re burn if the cd's corrupted, if the ISO's corrupted, then re download it.

md5summing a CD doesnt give you the same value as an iso image.....the md5sum changes when the CD is burnt.

Redownload SUSE 9.1 Personal and then try again and tell us what happens

Also, make sure your BIOS is set to manage plug n play...i.e. non-plug n play OS. Still this probably isn't the problem...but you'll need it set that way eventually.

Thank you all. I'll go and redownload SuSE 9.1. About my BIOS, I can't set any of those plug and play options or any other by the way, because simply it does not have that kind of options. It's a VERY simple BIOS.