Okay, in a nutshell; I have downloaded OpenSUSE 11.1 and I’m getting ready to install it in a dual-boot environment with XP. I’m no expert, nor am I a stranger to Linux. Here’s what I’m having trouble with… I have an 80 gig drive split into three partitions - part.1 40 gig XP, part.2 2.25 gig SWAP, and part. 3 37 gig for ‘/’. When I run the OpenSUSE installation, /dev/sda1 should be my XP partition, /dev/sda2 for SWAP, and /dev/sda3 for ‘/’… Instead, my first partition, XP, is showing up as /dev/sda3…? Can someone make heads or tails of this?
Does it really matter how is it showing? It not a problem at all. For me personally even if it would be /dev/sda54 (would have to be GPT) i wouldn’t mind 
Do you mean that the other ones are sda4 and sda5? In that case I should take it for granted hat the computer sees it right and you have it wrong.
Somewhere in the history of this disk somebody has done some unexpected things. I suppose that either sda1 or sda2 is still there as the holder of the extended partitions (because the numbers now go over 4).
Can’t you post a complete list of the disk layout? Either by doing
fdisk -l /dev/sda
from a repair boot or from writing it down from what the installer says?
Yes, please post the partition table as was suggested.
Partitions are numbered in chronological order, that is, in the sequence in which they were created. That is not the same as the physical sequence on the disk. fdisk will alert you if this is the case (and it is obvious when looking at the table).