Ah, nuke'n'pave works
In future, what you can do is boot using the SuSE boot disc. I can't remember the exact option, but ask for a console only boot from the CD. You need to know the structure of the drive your linux is on for the next bit:
Linux has its own equivalent of scandisk...
If your partitions are ext2 or ext3 then the program you need is called e2fsck
Type "info e2fsck" for full instructions on how to use it
If your partitions are reiserfs, then the program is called reiserfsck
Type "info reiserfsck" for full instructions.
Do this now and note down in that notebook you should be keeping (
) which instructions you'll run in the event of future HD corruption. For ext2 or ext3 I'd use e2fsck -fp /dev/<partitions>. For reiserfs, I'd use reiserfsck --fix-fixable --yes
NB: check what formats you're using. SuSE
normally defaults to reiserfs, but has been known on some peoples' systems to use ext2. If your hard discs are in ext2 format then I would
strongly recommend you do your third reinstall in as many days to ensure that you're using a journalised filesystem like ext3 or reiserfs.
Reason: ext2 is a bit like FAT32 - it's fine, it holds your files, it sets some attributes. But it has no idea what data has been read, what's been written and what's been cached. ext3 and reiserfs, like NTFS, keep track of what the data's doing. It's not infallible (as you'll have discovered if you
were using a journalised fs) but it saves a lot of hassle in the event of a bad shut down.
I'm not sure why the motherboard's flashing up diagnostic codes: I know Random Nonsense had similar issues with his EPoX motherboard and SuSE 7.3