1) I think you should check your partitions and make sure you've got them setup properly. Perhaps try another filesystem than you're already using?

2) This sounds stupid, but are you positive your HDD works fine? Have you recently had other operating systems on it?

3) This is slightly stupid as well - are you sure your CD drive doesn't have any issues? I've had problems before where my CD drive would work fine in short burst situations like moving files in Windows, but when installing an OS it would just die right then and there.

1. partitions should be fine. i just had linux redhat fedora core on it

2. same as above.

3. wouldnt be suprized cd drive sucks.

Yet another rubbish sort of answer (I really don't know crap about Linux) but what are you selecting on the CD boot menu? Your case sounds just like a guy I know who was selecting 'manual install' rather than just 'install'.

Why SuSe? SuSe uses RPM's which don't resolve dependencies...this makes software installation a huge headache if you don't have the right software already installed.

If you want a kick butt, easy to install, easy to upgrade distro with dependency resolution in the package management scheme...try MEPIS.

Download from http://mrbass.org/linux/mepis/

What are you talking about? YaST2 checks dependencies AND makes almost every single install easy. YaST2's included with SuSE.