SuSE 7.1 install randomly freezes after Installation begins

[netsparc]

I just got a new computer, had enough fun trying to set it up, and that bit. I brought over the hard drives from the old one, and thought that it wouldn't hurt to reinstall linux since I probably screwed it up beyond what I felt like fixing.

I went to install and a few things I don't know how to fix happened. First my bios must be screwed up because It only selectivly allows me to boot from floppy disk, never cdrom. Luckly the suse 7.1 boot disk I made works, the 7.0 didn't. I went through everything normally and installed, but around the 300'th package installation it just stoped. Sometimes even froze. I kept trying and eventually (it actually gets worse everytime I try) got to the 7th phase of installation, it offered to show a log and I choose no. It froze again. If anyone knows what's going on please let me know. I even tried cleaning the cds.

By the way I have an amd 1Ghz, 380MB RAM, an abit kt7a motherboard, and a radeon graphics card w/ soundblaster live! value sound card.

[bdg1983]

How are your drives setup? hd's and cd's on p/m, p/s, s/m or s/s

Sometimes having the cdrom as a slave device on the secondary channel can cause problems.

Got the antivirus disabled in the bios? Anything else in the bios you can see that might stop Linux from installing?

[netsparc]

The bios has been giving me alot of trouble--too many options to think about at once. It was the reason for modem not being detected in windows, halt after autoexec, and now this ... probably.

setup: p/m = old hd, p/s = new hd, s/m = cd-recorder, s/s = none

I'll try antivirus, though I think it's disabled. I'm also going to use abit's bios upgrade.

[netsparc]

I tried installation again today... I had keyboard so I hit the differant ctrl+alt+f* keys I noticed the following message:

probable hardware bug: clock timer configuration lost - probably a VIA686a
probable hardware bug: restoring chip configuration

Is this the cause of the problem? I have a vague idea of what it means.

[bdg1983]

My other pc I built recently actually has similiar hardware as yours though I still haven't finished hooking up all the cables and powering it on. Probably tomorrow.

Abit KT7A
AMD Tbird 1.13
SB Live Value 5.1
640MB
ATI Radeon VE

My other new pc (Asus cuv4x-c and PIII-733) also has the via chipset, but my distro (Caldera Workstation 3.1) installs fine on it and it also should on the Abit (I hope).

Do you know what kernel SuSE 7.1 uses? It should be the 2.4 series which should have some support for the via.

Any chance you could try Mandrake 8.0 for even the latest Caldera so you could at least know if it's possible to get Linux installed on your hardware?

I would also check SuSE's support site to see if they have anything on the via chipset and suggestions.

[ToolPackinMama]

I had some similar problems with SuSE 7.1 install on my VIA/AMD homebuilt sys, and had never had install problems like that with other distros. Mandrake 8.0 no problem. I finally was successful when I did 2 things:

disabled my LAN hub (unplugged it)

Did not say yes to 3d acceleration in the vid setup.

That took care of it. I don't know which of these did it or if I needed both. BTW, I do like SuSE 7.1 a lot. :)