Ain't we got fun?- a short list of newbie probs

[ogami1972]

first off, thank you in advance to all who share or have shared their knowledge with me, and good luck to anyone else.
My SYS:
celeron 686/512mb
Nvidia 32m video, M-audio Delta Audiophile 2496 soundcard
3 HD- 20g windows, 80g storage, 6g running "poor man's install"
My Probs:
Keeping up Appearances: I tried to "p.m.i." by saving just the image, but it was sketchy, so i installed an old HD and pmi'd the whole partition. Success!...kinda. i can change the desktop appearance and save the config, but if i install new software, add an icon to the tray, or similar, i am told "the knoppix config. could NOT be saved". Any ideas?
Sound Off!: My soundcard does not seem to recognize with ALSA or OSS, though the respective websites both claim to support the card. Sound comes from my onboard output just fine. OSS doesn't have any effect; ALSA sends an error message that the sound device could not be opened. An attept to load a licensed version of OSS resulted in an error that said i was not root. dammit. when i logged in root and attepmted again, i got an error that said the HD could not be written to ( the "read-only" box was NOT checked).
WHY WHY WHY!?: After the first attempt at p.m.i., i found that if i booted with full cheat codes (eg "knoppix home=/dev/hdd1 myconfig=/dev/hdd1 fromhd=/dev/hdd1") i would get a message stating "could not find the knoppix file sys,, am droping you to limited shell". less specific cheat codes ("home=scan fromhd" etc.) worked, so fine, but why?
i realize how many little things can make a big difference, and no user's experience will be identical, but any help is greatly appreciated. If you can't help, thanks for reading!

[CrashedAgain]

first off, thank you in advance to all who share or have shared their knowledge with me, and good luck to anyone else.
My SYS:
celeron 686/512mb
Nvidia 32m video, M-audio Delta Audiophile 2496 soundcard
3 HD- 20g windows, 80g storage, 6g running "poor man's install"
My Probs:
Keeping up Appearances: I tried to "p.m.i." by saving just the image, but it was sketchy, so i installed an old HD and pmi'd the whole partition. Success!...kinda. i can change the desktop appearance and save the config, but if i install new software, add an icon to the tray, or similar, i am told "the knoppix config. could NOT be saved". Any ideas?
Sound Off!: My soundcard does not seem to recognize with ALSA or OSS, though the respective websites both claim to support the card. Sound comes from my onboard output just fine. OSS doesn't have any effect; ALSA sends an error message that the sound device could not be opened. An attept to load a licensed version of OSS resulted in an error that said i was not root. dammit. when i logged in root and attepmted again, i got an error that said the HD could not be written to ( the "read-only" box was NOT checked).
WHY WHY WHY!?: After the first attempt at p.m.i., i found that if i booted with full cheat codes (eg "knoppix home=/dev/hdd1 myconfig=/dev/hdd1 fromhd=/dev/hdd1") i would get a message stating "could not find the knoppix file sys,, am droping you to limited shell". less specific cheat codes ("home=scan fromhd" etc.) worked, so fine, but why?
i realize how many little things can make a big difference, and no user's experience will be identical, but any help is greatly appreciated. If you can't help, thanks for reading!

First off, if you have 6G available, why not do a full HD install instead of a poormans? Poormans install is an interesting Knoppix feature but it's not really as effective as a full HD install, you are limited to the apps available from klik, persistent home works but again is limited compared to the real thing, etc. With a full HD install you can customize, upgrade & otherwise tweak the basic system which you cannot do with poormans. For instance, you may want to change the cursor theme or something--impossible with poormans except for the few themes available 'from stock'. (One of my pet peeves with Knoppix...the available cursors are difficult to see on a laptop.) If you decide to go with HD install, you have 3 choices 'beginner, Knoppix or Debian' style. Knoppix gives a single user (knoppix) system with full hardware detection each boot, beginner gives a multi user system again with full hardware detection each boot & Debian gives a multi user system with full hardware detection on the initial installation only.
I have also found that 'home=scan' works better than 'home=hdXX' but other postings indicate some users have the opposite results.
If you decide to stick with poormans, you cannot put your poormans install and your persistent home & config file son the same partition. Knoppix will not mount give write access to the partition on which the pooormans is installed and you must have write access to the persistent home & saved config.
Your sound problems are possibly because arts is hogging the sound device. Arts is KDE's sound server, you really can't get away from it if you are using KDE. What sound application are you using which is not working? (eg: xmms?)
Hope this helps a little bit anyway.

[ogami1972]

little help? try a lot!
i had not seen the "home+config on one partition, image on another" idea, and sure enough, that is how mysytem is currently arranged. i will try this first.
as for a full HD install, i am more than willing, however, my goal is this: my windows setup will return to it's days as a DAW, before i littered it with all the bells and whistles you just can't resisit online, and knoppix will function for daily activities (email, IM, etc.). i have heard dual-boot systems can have their drawbacks, or even serious problems. so i was trying to be less invasive. i have run the "lilo config" thingy, but didn't understand the prompt. it was scary.
as for sound, yes, i have only used xmms. again,, my goal is to keep my audio activities in windows, but a man's gotta have tunes. will switching desktops help?

[ogami1972]

uh...ok...
so i formatted my 3rd drive so as to start fresh, but decided i was being a pansy, so when i came back up, i went for a full hd install! and screwed it up!
something went wrong when i partioned, and now scandisk sez there are problems it just can't fix. so i went ahead and tried a second PMInstall anyway.
i created a home and a config on mymain windows drive as a file, then "tohd"'d to the slightly damaged drive. everything went nicely, but KDE is gone- i boot to a debian splash screen. cheatcodes have no effect. this appears to be the "windowmaker" module. i'm already getting used to it, but does anyone know why this might have happened? (or how i can get rid of the debian spalsh screen?)
also- ALSA stll can not open the sound device, and oss only plays thru onboard sound.

[CrashedAgain]

uh...ok...
so i formatted my 3rd drive so as to start fresh, but decided i was being a pansy, so when i came back up, i went for a full hd install! and screwed it up!
something went wrong when i partioned, and now scandisk sez there are problems it just can't fix. so i went ahead and tried a second PMInstall anyway.
i created a home and a config on mymain windows drive as a file, then "tohd"'d to the slightly damaged drive. everything went nicely, but KDE is gone- i boot to a debian splash screen. cheatcodes have no effect. this appears to be the "windowmaker" module. i'm already getting used to it, but does anyone know why this might have happened? (or how i can get rid of the debian spalsh screen?)
also- ALSA stll can not open the sound device, and oss only plays thru onboard sound.
What windows version? If it's XP or 2000 on an NTFS formatted filesystem, then be aware linux has problems writing to NTFS systems. You can still put lilo on to dual boot thou, lilo goes on the MBR which is not an NTFS filesystem.
How is the 3rd HD formatted? If it's linux (use ext3), MS scandisk won't be able to do anything with it, use linux cfdisk or linux fdisk instead.
What went wrong? How is it screwed up? It SHOULD work just to run the HD install script, install to the 3rd HD (hdc?). Yopu may have a bit of problem with lilo as you will want it on the MBR of hda1 which the system bios will see as the active' drive. If the install script puts lilo on hdc? instead, you should still be OK, you should be able to install lilo to hda1 from the CD:
copy the file /etc/lilo.conf to /home/knoppix so you can edit it
edit so it says boot=hda1 mount root as hdc?
the HD install script will have set up lilo to show all partitions so just mount /hdc? & copy all this setup from /mnt/hdac?etc/lilo.conf to your new lilo
then run lilo with sudo lilo -c /home/knoppix/lilo.conf to use your new config file & lilo should be installed on hda1.
Alternate method of booting hdc? fromthe hda1/MBR lilo: If you have lilo on hdc?, you can just boot into this lilo from the hda1 MBR lilo by booting hdc? as an 'other' filesystem
Most reports seem to indicate the config lilo script doesn't work very well...better to just edit /etc/lilo.conf instaed.
As for your present pmi problem: can't even guess as to the problem. What you are seeing is a default minimal window manager Knoppix uses if it can't stsrt KDE. This usually indicates Knoppix is having problems with not enough memory or is having problems with the video setup.
try ctrl-alt-f2 to get into a root shell then 'startx' with should attempt to start kde; see what you get for error messages.
Did you completely remove the old poormans install by deleteing the file before attemting the new install? I have had problems with multiple installs seeming to cross configure.