suse 8.1 install w/ 32 meg ram

I am trying to do an ftp install on a p133 w/ 32 megs ram. During the install, i get a message "insufficient memory, activate swap". So i kill the install, reboot to rescue mode so that i can access fdisk to create the swap. it seems to successfully create the swap partition (128 meg), it shows up when i do a "p" in fdisk. i then reboot, when i get the error about insufficient memory, activate swap, i enter the swap partition (in this case /dev/hda1 (i also tried creating it as /dev/hda2)), i then get an error "unable to activate swap:...what am i doing wrong? (yes, i did a "w" at the end of fdisk to write the partition info... any help would be greatly appreciated.... cliff