Can't find KNIPPIX filesystem on DELL inpiron 530 desktop

[wagoner]

I have a knoppix 5.1.1 bootdisk and I have not been able to get it to work on my new DELL. It works fine on another system, so I am sure that the disk (CD) is ok. It starts loading and then gives an error "Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry. Dropping you to a (very limited) shell. Can't do anything in the shell either.
tried failsafe cheatcode, same thing.
Then I tried expert. It started to boot and then provided a list of scsi modules and asked me to type one in. Couldn't type anything, however. It just hangs there. What could be wrong? Do I need to install some new modules? (not that I know how to do that). I'm a novice linux user, but I'm trying to learn.

[Harry Kuhman]

.... It works fine on another system, so I am sure that the disk (CD) is ok. ....
I've seen exactly that logic expressed by more than one other person, only to finally weeks later have them acknowledge that a low speed burn solved their boot problems. If the disk was burnt at high speed it can be quite marginal and behave differently on different CD drives. If you did not burn this disk yourself at low speed then I suggest that you burn another copy. And in light of failsafe not booting I suspect that this is the problem.

Alternately, boot and type memtest at the boot prompt to run memtest86 and check your system memory.

[wagoner]

Thanks Harry. I can try burning a new disk at a slow speed. My current disk was purchased from on-disk.com. I was thinking that a commercially purchased disk would be of good quality, but perhaps not. I also purchased an ubuntu disk from them, and it did run on the Dell.

[Harry Kuhman]

.... I was thinking that a commercially purchased disk would be of good quality, but perhaps not. ....
My expectation is exactly the opposite. I have no experience or knowledge of your particular vendor, but in general those selling discs this way tend to burn them as fast as they can to maximize profit. Think of it as "I can burn this disk in less than 2 minutes, or in 20 minutes or more if I make the effort to do a low speed burn". Which do you expect someone trying to profit by selling the work of others to do? They also tend to use cheap media, which may also be a problem, but we frequently see that high speed burns cause exactly the problem you report, the disc works in some drives but not others.

Good luck on the reburn. Don't forget to run the md5 test, it is very important if you don't download with BitTorrent, and worth doing even if you do. And please post back to let us know your results.