OK, new user wanting to try opensuse…Burned the 64 bit DVD and I’m doing an install on a stand alone machine. Everything seems to run fine during the installation with the exception of “Search For Linux Partitions”…Its stays there forever, well over twenty minutes. Then it takes off and goes through the install. Everything looks fine from then on until the boot after the installation. “Missing Operating System”…obiviously there’s something it doesn’t like there. I’m letting it make the decisions on the partitions and the top two are in red…I sure that’s a clue, but not sure why or how its there.
You must tell us about your computer hardware. Tell us of your hard disk(s) and the partitions it contains. Are you trying to get a dual boot working with Windows? For the boot drive to work, you either need to load generic boot code into the MBR and mark the openSUSE partition as being active, or load Grub into the MBR and the openSUSE Partition can boot from any partition. There is an issue with new hard drives if they use a GPT partitioned disk as might come with WIndows 8 or when the hard disk is larger than 2.2 Tarabytes. Here is some info to look at for hard disks not formatted in GPT:
https://forums.opensuse.org/content/111-partitioning-hard-disk-during-install.html
Thank You,
Thanks for the link, that’s the problem. It’s an older Biostar TA790GX 128m mother board, with an AMD Athlon 64X, the drive is Western digital 320 gig, not that older just a decent machine I have around and decided to take the plunge into Linux. Used to be a raid machine for a juke box. The drive has nothing on it and I now see that’s the problem. On the partition screen sda1 is black, sda2 and 3 are in red. I’ll give it a try…not like the old days…g=c800:5…maybe I’m too old for this 
Thanks for the help…
So, when the system does not boot the required stuff did not happen. Sometimes having a couple of hard disks can be the problem. Sometimes, trying to dual boot is the problem. Be that as it may, look through the link and please ask more questions.
Thank You,
The KDE version installed with no problems, boots fast. Took a little bit to figure out how to get the partitions installed, I let it partition the entire drive and then it was happy to suggest the correct patitioning during the installation of KDE. Boots and runs fine. Tried to install the 12.2 version 4.X gig file and it did the same thing on the “partition search” took a long time before it moved on and then had one partition it wanted to create in red. May be a bad down load on my part. I’ll do a little playing with this version and try the newer one again later.
Thanks for the help…
I actually had one PC that also took a very long time on the partition search. I thought at first it had failed, but leaving it alone found it working OK later. It must be a particular hardware type, but not sure what it is. This PC, was an older mini-ATX motherboard sporting a Intel Core 2 duo CPU. Its is kind of slow by today’s standards and had a 320 GB SATA hard drive, one of the first SATA’s that came out. When I put this motherboard in a very small case, I switched it over to a 80 GB SSD and 250 GB laptop hard drive. The net result of this hard drive change was for openSUSE 12.2 to be installed normally, with no wait. So the issue was some combination of the main board chipset and the older SATA hard drive. Putting the same 320 GB SATA hard drive in an external USB 2 enclosure found no delay from a different openSUSE install. So I feel that this pause is hardware related, but may not mean it is a hardware failure of any kind.
Thank You,
You mention RAID. What kind? hardware/BIOS assisted? Is it turned on or off? May be an issue.
I had the same problem when i was installing openSUSE using DVD. The issue is not present when i installed through Live ISOs.Mine was a 30GB western digital non sata thing
It is no more now 
. Died just before new year due to power supply failure. The new Hitachi (HDS72105) Sata stuff did not face any trouble in the “searching for linux partitions” stage.
Interesting…it’s bios driven raid, but raid is off. It’s the SB750 Southbridge chipset, SATA 2. During the installation it does pause at the HD controller, not for very long but longer than would be expected on detecting the type of controller. Then moves on to the partitioning…Sounds like I may have to do a bit of play time with the bios controller settings, right now its set to Native IDE and SATA IDE enabled…I’ll play and see if I can get it to change it’s mind. Something tells me, that’s where the problem is…Thanks