Repair 12.3 after botched upgrade

English Install/Boot/Login
1

This is about my Dell laptop that has only 2GB of RAM. It was running 12.3 KDE 32-bit perfectly.

To upgrade to 13.1 I changed the repositories and followed the instructions on the website. Everything seemed to be going fine (if a bit slow). I went away and when I returned I found it had lost the internet connection.

I downloaded the rescue CD iso from the web site. It worked hard and reset the repositories to 12.3. I have a desktop, I can open Yast, but I have no internet - even with a cable connected to the router (ADSL). The start menu will not look for Network Manager, ditto for the CLI. Zypper appears to be present. I tried to configure the cable connection via Yast but get lost in the options. It keeps asking for the ISP name.

I have also downloaded the DVD iso for 12.3 32-bit. It booted and I tried the “rescue” option but got nowhere - probably through ignorance.

Can anyone point me in the right direction - I am not familiar with this area at all. Perhaps I could install Network Manager from the DVD image? There is nothing of great value on the machine that has not been backed up but I prefer to repair rather than reinstall.

2

My 12.3 DVD image was not reliable [not a COM32R image] so I created a new one on different medium.
Lo and behold: a beautiful GUI that I have never seen before. It is also intelligent. I chose ‘install’ and it offered to repair my installation. I chose that option.
It reinstalled the cable connection, sorted out my repositories, partitions, etc.
Now installing packages.

Hopefully I will recover some of the software.

3

BUT IT FAILED TO COMPLETE TWICE
I was left without an internet connection, again, and an incomplete instalation. A new install with automatic selections did the trick. After a struggle with repositories (not completely solved) I issued

NetworkManager

as root and

zypper up

Naturally, all personal setup and installations have vanished.

Was there a more elegant way . . . . ?