Trying to install on a:
Dell Precision T3500
OpenSuse 11.3 keeps showing the following message:
“Make sure CD number 1 is in your drive”
I ordered the DVD from the OpenSuse site, so they ARE NOT burned copies.
I also tried burning images, the same problem happens.
No matter what I do, it does not go beyond this message…
I know it is Suse related, I did not have any problems with other distro (i.e ubuntu)
Any solution???
Argh!
Weird problem. When you boot on the DVD, at the menu, select check media to see if there is no problem with it.
When you boot on the disk, press left-shift at the same time and you’ll arrive at a prompt. Type install to see if you can start the installer.
It seems it has to do with the DVD driver… while trying to check the media it says that it can not find the CD or DVD.
Boot on the disk??? The thing has Windows 7 installed…
After trying to run the installer under Windows 7, I got the “can not exec bcdedit.exe”
Well, I will keep trying but who has more suggestions???
I sounds faulty to me
Can you try it in any other PC?
Even if you have windows7 installed, you can still boot on the DVD drive (insert the DVD into the drive and reboot the computer). I don’t mean to execute the DVD in windows, it will not work of course.
Do as suggested by caf4926.
CDs and DVDs are just weird. It’s possible that this DVD will work on other machines (more precisely with other CD/DVD readers), but never on that one, although other DVDs will. I suggest using another CD/DVD drive. That’s usually how I fix this kind of problems. Another possibility would be to install from a USB stick, but in order to create one, you need a running Linux … or maybe not (I don’t know). Notice that the fact that you didn’t have problem with Ubuntu doesn’t mean anything. I had the same problem recently with a machine on which I installed other distros and FreeBSD without problems … but had to replace the DVD drive in order to boot openSUSE DVD. You can try the live CD (I did not). It might work.
Your right on this one pta, but it’s unfortunate for martine1212, she ordered the DVD maybe because she deosn’t have the bandwith to downlaod the DVD or the CD… 
On 2010-12-07 19:06, martine1212 wrote:
I heard of this problem before, but I have no idea why.
> I ordered the DVD from the OpenSuse site, so they ARE NOT burned
> copies.
Ie, the paid for box. Then you have installation support, use it 
I think it is info@open-slx.com
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
Duuuhhhh!!! Yes I still can boot…that is not the problem… the problem is it does not recongnizes the DVD!!!
After burning 4 images…it is not a problem of a faulty CD…
As I said IT IS AN ORIGINAL ONE ORDERED ONLINE.
It passes the verifiaction in another machine…
Now, I try to run it from an USB hard drive…it worked but the installation is trying to install the USB drive not the hard drive inside the Dell T3500
Last time I checked I AM A HE!!!
Use the custom partitioning option to select the install location
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/11.2%20slideshow/pic8-default%20partition%20proposal.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/11.2%20slideshow/pic9-custom%20partitioons.png
Ok.
You need 3 partitions to install openSUSE :
So, check step 3 of this link to help : SDB:Live CD installation for 11.3 - openSUSE. You have to create the partition setup, don’t keep the sugegstion of the installer.
Oups, sorry, I didn’t see your response caf4926.
Problem:
The HD of the Dell workstation DOES NOT show up, only the little USB drive shows up…
So it does not matter what I choose…only one drive shows up, and re-scanning does not show any extra devices.
Extremely weird. Do you also have Ubuntu installed on that machine?
No, this one is new… but I have othe machine that gives no problems.
Main difference is that the new one is 64bit system, the old one is 32 bit.
I am going to ask Dell about it…
Other thing that I notice: RAID is enable… tempting to disable it but it would for sure kill the system.
This happen during the installation, right ?
If so, I encountered this with 11.4 milestone-4 when installing from an external USB DVD drive, using the 32-bit installation DVD.
I noted retry did not work. I noted ejecting the DVD and re-inserting the DVD did not work.
The solution (?) I stumbled across was to do the following in sequence (it may be possible to cut out a step or two)
lsusb
fdisk -l
and then …
Good luck.
How funny!
@oldcpu, it reminds me of something … 
Ok, I made it work with the external DVD ($75 bucks to HP)…
Now, it does not detect any hard drives on the Dell T3500
I am going to set the RAID to SATA only…
Any other suggestions???
This is driving me crazy…
On some PCs it is necessary to set the RAID to AHCI for openSUSE to install.
If it reminds you something pta, do you have a suggestion? The problem may come from the enabled RAID…
I am not an expert with RAID, should martine1212 disabled it through the BIOS and try the installation again to see if it works?
Oups, didn’t see your intervention oldcpu.
Yep definitely. Hopefully she doesn’t want to dualboot with Windows. I guess it’s the latest trick used by Microsoft to complicate Linux installation on OEM laptops. Using 3 primary partitions for Windows wasn’t enough. So they had to set the BIOS in raid only - making a system recovery otherwise impossible.
This problem is unrelated with the non working CD/DVD but illustrates perfectly one of the golden rules of computers: they are always 2 problems, unrelated with each other but occurring at the same time.