Install Crashing/Screen glitch?

Hey guys,

Not too sure whats happening, or how to fix it.

During install, it begins the progress bar as normal, goes through many things then after about 10-15 minutes it started a white scrolling text displaying (I think) information its installing, I only caught it for a second but it said something about “DO NOT PANIC!!” then seconds later - one (dual screen setup) screen goes black with green pixel blocks all over, and the second monitors stays black. I’ve let it sit like this for about 20 or so minutes and it just hangs there. When I try holding the power button down, it goes back to normal (the screens) and starts scrolling some power off scrolling text.

After this I boot into windows, and can’t see the HD I installed to anymore. If I try and install, does the same thing over and over.

Settings, Specs, Etc

AMD 3500+
Nvidia 7800GTX
2gb DDR RAM
Asus a8n-sli Deluxe
1HDD 150gb IDE, with Windows XP installed
2HDD 250GB IDE, Blank HD (using for SUSE install)
3HDD 1tb USB (storage)

Install setup options

Using DVD version of SUSE
Installing KDE

I select my harddrive (2nd one), allow it to delete any information on it and partition it for SUSE. Since this HD is for linux only I choose the option “Use Entire Disk”. Choose my timezone and leave pretty much everything else alone.

I’m really at loss of what to do here.

As I type this i’ve activated the Repair tool from the DVD and it seems to be currently taking off from where it dropped as far as I can tell. I’ll post back if it doesn’t work, or if it succeeds.

Thanks guys, seems like a great community here so far.

Okay I think I have some success!

The Repair tool seemed to help, it found issues with the bootloader and a few packages and was able to repair them.

After that I rebooted, turned off boot from cd and chose to boot from HD. In my HDD boot priority, it goes XP HDD > SUSE HDD > Removable HDD’s

Upon boot it gave me no option to choose to boot from XP or SUSE, just defaulted with XP. So I rebooted and changed boot priority in my bios to SUSE HDD > XP HDD > Removeable HDD and then SUSE booted up and gave me the option of standard SUSE or a failsafe SUSE

Now, If I chose the standard SUSE option - it does the scrolling loading text, then suddenly my screens go black and pixilated.

If I choose the failsafe SUSE - It loads perfectly fine except my resolution is really off. So I need some help with…

How do I make it so I get boot options between XP or SUSE? Keep in mind each OS is on a seperate HDD.

How do I fix my (Driver issue?) problem with loading regular suse, so I can stop using the failsafe mode and get proper resolution? I’m assuming its a driver issue…if someone wouldn’t mind posting a (simple to read) explanation on how to fix this please.

Thanks again guys,

Doc

First: the bootloader should find both XP and openSUSE. So something goes wrong there. No matter whether the OS’s are on seperate disks or not.
Second: you need the NVIDIA driver to be installed. There’s loads of posts in the forum about how to do this. Since your card is not too new, you could do with the easy way, have Yast install the driver from the repos.

But, first things first. Can you please post output of following commands? Open a terminal window and execute them, post output here.

fdisk -l
To see how your disks are organized

su -c ‘cat /boot/grub/menu.lst’
This will ask for rootpassword and then show contents of bootmenu.

About the install issue: I’ve seen systems where it took over half an hour to get an initial graphic configuration. So, just give it time. Maybe it’s better to use one monitor during install and connect and configure the second one afterwards.

Thanks for the reply! Thanks to the guys in IRC I got my Video issue resolved, but still my boot is an issue. Here are pasteouts of what you asked for.

linux-tspt:/home/shay # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x357c357b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       19457   156288321    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1449f7f9

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1         262     2104483+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb2   *         263        2873    20972857+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb3            2874       30401   221118660   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x469d60df

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1               1      121601   976760001    7  HPFS/NTFS

And the other

linux-tspt:/home/shay # su -c 'cat /boot/grub/menu.lst'          
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu Sep 10 12:58:47 CDT 2009                                                              
default 2                                                         
timeout 8                                                         
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message                                      
##YaST - activate                                                 

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###                                                            
title openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.29-0.1 (pae)                         
    root (hd0,1)                                                  
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2500JB-00REA0_WD-WMANK4072502-part2 repair=1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2500JB-00REA0_WD-WMANK4072502-part1 splash=silent showopts vga=0x31a                                            
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae                         

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###                                                         
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.29-0.1 (pae)             
    root (hd0,1)                                                  
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2500JB-00REA0_WD-WMANK4072502-part2 showopts ide=nodma apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a              
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae                         


###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###                                                            
title openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.29-0.1 (default)                     
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2500JB-00REA0_WD-WMANK4072502-part2 repair=1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2500JB-00REA0_WD-WMANK4072502-part1 splash=silent showopts vga=791
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.29-0.1-default


###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.29-0.1 (default)
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2500JB-00REA0_WD-WMANK4072502-part2 showopts ide=nodma apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=offhighres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.29-0.1-default


###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2500JB-00REA0_WD-WMANK4072502-part2    repair=1 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2500JB-00REA0_WD-WMANK4072502-part1 splash=silent showopts vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd


###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD2500JB-00REA0_WD-WMANK4072502-part2 showopts ide=nodma apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd

Could anybody help me out with this? If you need more info, just ask!