Hello All,
Have been reading up on SuSE 10 and got really keen. Installed 5 CD set on AMD k6 367 MHz but not really in control of events. Intended to install it on second HDD but it chose to shrink XP on the first HDD, which I accepted.
After some hours, particularly with the online updates, we got right to the very last line - hardware devices. The black screen of death is even more worrying than the blue one, as it's like the end of black and white tv without the national anthem and the white dot.
But wait a minute! The CD ROM still works, the monitor shows a solid light (not flashing) so it hasn't crashed, I think? Xp boots fine on reset and tried booting SuSE 10 in safe mode but without success.
Checked some SuSE 10 websites and found the same problem addressed and tried the following...Advised to Ctrl-Alt-Backspace when black screen appeared - no good. Tried it just before black screen appeared - things happened. Followed advice... login as root.....enter sax2 -m 0=vesa - things happened, got very excited... you've guessed... black screen of (not quite) death. Too ignorant to go any further without help.
Thanks in advance and apologies for length of thread.
Regards,
peahouse05

No, it is not a BSoD ... but it looks like your graphic card may not have been found correctly.

Linux is there and running, you just need to start X so you can 'see' it.

Do you see a curser top left of your screen?

Suse is gonna be dead slow on that machine. its worse that windows!

Thanks Techy - I am just using this machine to learn - new hdd, cards, ram, etc and will be asking for info re not new (too expensive) MB soon. You are correct, as shown by the SuSE 10 installation.

Thanks Muckshifter - There is no cursor but it looks like a card problem as my new (used) graphics card shows its own BIOS on booting and Linux is definitley installed. Should I revert to the onboard graphics card?

Cheers both,
peahouse05

My own guess here is that the Suse 10 installation is fine but that the system just doesn't have the power to run it.

In fact I'm surprised that XP is running on a 367Hz machine.

Sorry Do you have a faster machine you could try Suse 10 on, cos it really is a fine little Distro.

You can try any card you like, but try "alt + F7" first ...

Thanks for your replies guys!
Muckshifter - as usual the Konqueror! Just before black screen Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, things happened. Then alt+F7 as you suggested and here we are on SuSE 10.
Cheers,
peahouse05

smilies inserting hyperlinks?

Smillies ... , no the smillies do work but you're going to need to do it the "old school" way ... or use another browser.

peahouse05, all the "F" keys invoke different 'consoles/teminals' from F1 - F6 accessed by using Ctrl+Alt+F1 ... Ctrl+Alt+Backspace is a "short-cut" to loging out of X ... X is your graphic desktop.

So, if you have a program crash, you can use Ctrl+Alt+F1 that will take you will go out of X, and get an empty terminal screen, fully black with a login prompt.

Then log in as "root" ( not "su" this time ) and type "top", you will get the process-table with the PID numbers, find the number that's hurting, close top with the"Q" key, press Alt+F2, you will get a second black screen ( terminal ) to log in to, log in as root and type "kill 4246" or whatever the offending program is, then returning to X, press Alt+F7 !

That is if a Linux program ever does crash on you, that can happen but is very rare.

Pleased to see you in Linux.

Thanks Muckshifter,
Just the kind of info I need to get the first mental picture of what is going on. Install has detected printers but I have not had time to try them yet and have not checked whether Suse will boot all the way to the desktop.
Cheers,
peahouse05

Hello All,
Using SuSE 10 for this but re-installed it to try to get over the problem of failing to configure hardware on booting. Can get it working from advice kindly suplied by members, but booting takes me to 'users' and then through 'cleanup', 'release notes' and then fails in 'hardware configuration'. All of this takes about 15 minutes, which is a bit of a pain.
Any ideas most welcome.
Cheers,
peahouse05