I have seen this problem brought up before, but with no suitable solution (I have tried entering nodma, failsafe, etc... after the "Welcome to the KNOPPIX live GNU/Linux on CD!" screen appears)

I have put this disk in my desktop and had no problem loading it, so I know that it was burned properly. What else can I do to make this work? I am desperately trying to get files off of an HP notebook. I am using version 5.1.1

The screen reads as follows...

Running Linux Kernel 2.6.19
Total Memory Available: 1033384kB, Memory free: 1021748kB.
Scanning for USB/Firewire devices... Done.
Enabling DMA acceleration for: hda [ST98823A]
Enabling DMA acceleration for: hdc [HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4084N]
Looking for CD in: /dev/hdc

Then...
Can't find KNOPPIX filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press reset button to quit.

Additional builtin commands available:
Cat mount unmount
insmod rmmod lsmod

knoppix# _


Can anyone please help me on this, my wife needs the data off of this computer ASAP for work!
Thanks in advance for you help.