Hello Experts,
After endless search and looking at a prev. post in this forum to my problem, i am still unclear how to go about erasing my hard disk (deleting my Windows O/S) and having Suse as the only O/S on my laptop. Don’t want dual boots.
Can someone please provide me the steps as to how should i go about this when i reach the ‘Disk’ stage.
Much appreciated!
Use the expert partition option and tell openSUSE to use the entire disk.
I went to Edit Partition Setup>Expert Partitioner and i don’t see any option to use entire disk? Where should i be looking. Kindly Advice…
When you get to the page that looks like this
Image:11 1-install-009.png - openSUSE
it should list your drive like in this screen shot.
When you’re at the expert partitioning section, there is an expandable list on the left of your drives and partitions. Click the + next to Hard Disks.
Image:11 1-install-010.png - openSUSE
Look in this list and find your drive and select it. Then it should appear in the main window at the right. If windows is already installed on it, you’re going to need to delete it so you can reformat it.
Generally, you want to create a swap partition in the first part of the disk. You can choose this from the drop down list. The you can use the rest of the disk for openSUSE. Ext3 is the most common file system type to use.
The above instructions relates to OpenSuse 11.1 and i’m using 11.0.
Saying this, I am in this screen – Image:11 1-install-009.png - openSUSE
1)Selected the the first option (not the Custom Partioning (for experts))
2)In Step 2 I have an option of ‘Delete Windows Completely’.
This is the correct option, right. The reason why i ask is cause the instructions provided by ‘pilotgi’ looks different form mine. Just want to make sure i’m doing it correctly before i do go ahead and i remove Windows XP completely.
I do apologise for my ignorace.
Thanks!
On 11.0, on the Suggested screen, click on Create Partition Setup. The next screen will list the disk(s) and have a choice for Custom Partitioning. Select the disk and click Next; the following screen has a button in the middle for using the entire disk.
On 11.1, this may be different as the partitioner module has been re-designed. I can’t check that at this moment, so if you don’t see it there, someone else will need to pitch in here.
EDIT: @pilotgi has come to rescue - that’s it in 11.1, essentially the same as 11.0.
EDIT: You wanted 11.0 - yep, that’s the same, as I describe above.
So what i stated in my post 5 would be the same, right?
Yes. Check the IDE disk, click Next and the following screen should include the Use Entire Disk option.
You are doing this in a Virtual Box virtual machine? If so, and you want to replace the Windows OS already in it, why not just create a new virtual machine?
Yes,the disk is named as IDE and I get the ‘Delete Windows Completely’ option. I don’t get the Use the entire Disk option? Is this same?
No not a virtual box, im using my laptop, which currenlty on Windows XP.
I haven’t used the custom partitioning as I always use expert mode because I have multiple partitions. Go ahead and ‘delete windows completely’ and see what the next step is. I suspect you’ll be at the point where you’ll need to reformat.
OK, I see where the confusion is from. You are using 11.1 sample screenshots - and as I suggested before, there are differences compared to 11.0. The 11.1 screen similar to what you are seeing in 11.0 is this Image:11 1-install-011.png - openSUSE. But what is happening for you is that the installer is seeing what is on your disk and giving you that warning; you will only see that if you are doing what you are doing. So just say ‘yes’ and continue. If you are wiping the disk anyway, you can’t really do any harm.
The VBox confusion is again because of the screenshot you ref’d. The folks who made those screenshots did it installing in a Virtual Box vm, that’s why the IDE disk says “VBOX”. 
So, no problem there, either.
While Installing i got an error ‘Some packages failed to install’ and it threw me out and it did an exit.
Why could this be? Please Help.
Can you describe what happened after you partitioned/formatted your disk?
How big is the partition you’re using for installation?
Not sure if this helps…
I had received the Open Suse 11 DVD and i did an installation straight away.
When i opted for Create Partition Setup > Delete Windows Completely’.
(This is my local and only ‘C:’ drive that is being overwritten. HDD is sized 30gb but have used 16GB or so.)
It started to install packages of around 178mb or so.
While installing I got an exact error that it ‘failed to install certain packages’.
Next I did a ‘Verify Installation CD-ROM/DVD’ and it said ‘Error reading sector 1155744. This DVD is broken’.
Could it be due to some installation period that the DVD is broken or the DVD had errors?
That is because of either faulty media or a problem the optical drive reader had. Sometimes these drives are very sensitive to certain media or to a particular burn. But most of the time the problem is with the DVD itself, either the source file being corrupted in the download or when written to disk, or a flaw when the DVD is burned.
You need to do an md5sum check on the iso file. Then burn at a very slow speed, like 4x. Then boot the DVD and do a media check there.
If you purchased the DVD in a retail box, then the problem is probably with the reader. Commercial DVD’s are not burned like we do on the computer, they are “pressed” - DVD’s produced this way (anybody’s) are rarely bad.
To be honest with you I purchased this DVD from a guy selling it on Ebay at reasonable rate to promote OpenSuse.
As you say it now could be the DVD at fault.
I am not sure what u mean by - ‘You need to do an md5sum check on the iso file’?
I am doing a reboot, i get an prompt screen like on the command line and it remains in this screen, with output:
PXE-E61: Media Test failure, check cable
PXE-M04: Exiting PXE ROM.
Invalid Partition table_
How do i clean this as and when i get a new dvd, if so? Please advise.
Let’s keep this problem on 1 thread, OK? I’ll reply on the other thread.
