Can't boot OpenSuse 11.1

English Install/Boot/Login
1

hey guys,
i’m new to linux so please forgive me if i’m missing something obvious-
heres the story-
i have an old computer but the hdd broke so i bought a 500GB external hard drive and decided to install opensuse. i formatted it in MS-DOS format on my mac, disconnected the old hdd on the computer and connected the external hard drive by USB. i booted from the ISO image I downloaded off this website and the installer did all the necessary formats, partitioning and installations, i got into my desktop and got introduced - all fine, I then hit shutdown and it did a normal shutdown. now i went into my BIOS and told the computer to boot from the external hard drive, but when I boot, all I get is an error:

Booting from local disk…
error disk read error

error disk read error
Boot failure System halted

Thanks in advance

2

What did you use to install with? A dvd or cd?

If you used a cd, boot from it again and do this in a terminal, type: su and hit enter.
Now type: fdisk -l

Post the result here.

You could try also a utility disc called Super Grub Disk Homepage - Download CDROM
It should be able to boot your installation

3

hi there,
i installed with a DVD, so can I still get into the terminal?
i’m also downloading the disc utility you attached

4

Try this way. You may also find this page helpful anyway
HowTo Boot into openSUSE when it won’t Boot from the Grub Code on the Hard Drive

5

hey - thanks for your help by the way! -
okay heres the results from when running the supergrub disc-

i was given 2 options:
Boot Ubuntu GNU/Linux and
Auto Magic Boot

When i choose Boot Ubuntu GNU/Linux I get this: ‘error: no loaded kernel’

When I choose Auto Magic Boot there are 4 new options added:

1: Linux 2.6.27.7-9-pae.gz
2: Linux 2.6.27.7-9-pae.gz (single user mode)
3: Linux 2.6.27.7-9-pae
4: Linux 2.6.27.7-9-pae (single user mode)

1+2 both give the result ‘error: invalid magic number’
3+4 do a lot then finally end with: 'kernel panic - not syncing. Attempting to kill init!

I also tried hitting C to use the command line

‘su’ resulted in 'error: unknown command ‘su’ and the same with ‘fdisk -l’

is this really easy to solve or is it worth formatting the drive and installing a different distro?

Thanks for all your help so far. :wink:

6

also - in case you thought i was getting a grub menu upon boot - i’m not - just this error message:

error disk read error
Boot failure System halted

thanks

7

Installing SuSE on External USB Drive - openSUSE