[lug] SuSE 7.2 Error: "Unsupported partition table"

[BOF]

Hello,

I have been trying to install SuSE 7.2 Pro on the second hard drive of a 
system that I have had at least 175 of the 178 known Linux distributions 
on. (Well, not that many, but certainly RH, Slack, Debian, among others).

This 3.2 GB drive currently has Red Hat 7.2 on it, and was formatted as

    /dev/hdb1    swap      384 MB
    /dev/hdb2    ext2        rest of drive

When I attempt to install SuSE, it does sees the existing partitions 
during boot up, but then does not see them when it comes time to 
partition the drive. I issued instructions to set it up as above, and 
when it tries to begin installing software, the process fails with the 
error message:

    "The disk has an unsupported partition table. Please repartition 
disk /dev/hdb."

I do not understand why it does not see the existing partitions, nor do 
I know how to force it to see them. I've tried multiple ideas, including 
using Tom's root/boot disk to run fdisk to wipe the partition table and 
reset the partitions, but nothing that I do seems to work. Out of 
desperation, I just did a fresh Red Hat installation, using Disk Druid 
to establish the partitions. As soon as I got it to boot, I retried the 
SuSE installation, and got the error message.

Previous experience with this drive is that, once the partitions are 
set, they are seen by any other Linux distribution when I install it, 
and so I don't change them, other than to format them during 
installation to wipe the old installation. This works for everything I 
have tried except SuSE 7.2.

Anyone have any ideas how to fix or overcome this?

BOF