Absolute newbie needs help

Like many I decided to try knoppix because I could run it off a CD and get my feet wet in Linux easily.

I downloaded the 3.4 ISO and burned an image to CD.

It boots into knoppix and I get a whole screen full of stuff it is doing/loading (video/sound etc.) UNTIL I get to the line saying "Scanning for Harddisk partitions and creating /etc/fstab/..._" and then it just sits there. I waited at least 5 minutes 3 times and it just hangs there never progressing any farther.

I know nothing about knoppix and have no idea how to troubleshoot it.

Type in the bootscreen 'knoppix nodma' and hit enter. If that does'nt help try 'knoppix noapic' or 'knoppix failsave'.
http://www.eleli.de/knoppix/docs/tut...t_details.html

Thanks. I finally got it to work by using the knoppix26 command at the boot: prompt. Why it works using the 2.6 kernel and not the 2.4 kernel I have no idea.