I have a old laptop with CDROM and 384MB memory. I tried to install linux, but somehow opensuse is not even coming up. Is there any other I can install suse in the laptop harddrive. I tried to install after putting the harddrive in an enclosure. The installation goes through fine, but while booting it grub gives Error 17. The grub menu.lst is stating the harddrive as USB drive since I connected it through the enclosure ]. Is there a sample working laptop grub files. menu.lst, group.conf and device.map.
There are a number of possible problems; one is that you may need to install using VESA graphics; however, there are some posts saying that is not possible using 11.
Does the media you are using offer the option of a text install? If so, you could try that and if it works use SaX2 to find the correct graphical settings.
Unless your laptop can boot off an external hard drive (as in the BIOS can read off it), I don’t think GRUB will work that way. You don’t say what problems you had installing on the internal drive, why did that not work?
So just to be clear . . . you weren’t able to install to the laptop’s internal drive so you removed the drive and placed it in an enclosure attached via USB, and then were able to install it? Now when you boot you you boot you get the green grub menu, from there you get Error 17?
What make/model is the laptop, and its age? Drive size, type, age? In the bios, is there an option to boot from the external? Again in the bios, in the disk drive configuration, is there an Access Mode setting for LBA?
Boot from the DVD into Rescue Mode, login as root. Then post back here the output of: