I get bad resolution and knoppix freezes.

I want to say that I love the idea of open scource operating system. I must warn you though, this is my first time dealing with it in any regard. I have never used linux and or any other program other than windows and dos. I would love to watch tutorials and or read about how to use this software but there is no beginners page!! I wish someone could help me out.

My situation; I am trying to recover information on a harddrive that had win 7 on it but now will not load. It gets the Blue screen of death and when installed in another computer it does not even allow that computer to boot up. The hard drive is on cable select and my issues with knoppix are when it is not installed in my current computer.

My current setup is: amd athlon 64 5400, asus m2n-sli, EVGA nvidia 6800ultra, 4 gb ddr2 800mhx corsair ram.

My Problem: I downloaded knoppix 6.7.1 dvd, burned it to dvd using Magic ISO. restarted my computer with it in, it does boot from dvd and the screen shows the inital icon, the penguin, but the colors are off and pixelated. then the desktop shows with a backdrop and a lower taskbar. but the entire screen is suffering from the same problem as the initial screen. It is pixelated and not true colors. Last I can move the mouse but cannot click or do anything. Please help.