I seem to have broken a Live CD

[inkyfingers]

Maybe I do not have enough knowledge to do what I am attempting ...
I had been running Ubuntu for 6 months - hardware failure.
I hoped to use Knoppix to recover Open Office work.
I put Knoppix 6.0.1 onto my son's old pc from the attic. This has WinME and a "restore" function in hda1, while Windows and all usual files are on hda2. Hda1 is quite invisible in Windows.
As I was beginning to get the hang of knoppix, but before deliberately creating a persisting image and before properly reading the manual, I tried to import to Iceweasel bookmarks from a Firefox backup (json)
This stalled Iceweasel. Every time I restarted Iceweasel the system would stall, requiring pulling the plug on it. I wanted to read online Knoppix documentation from Knoppix - not possible.
I came to the conclusion that hidden .mozilla files are on hda1.
I tried first to rename them, then delete them - no improvement.
Eventually I deleted (all this in graphical) all of home file. (Which I thought was residing on hda1).
Now the live CD will not load - it stalls as above. I think I have failed to action a shutdown since the import.
Any ideas?
With thanks,
Iain

[Capricorny]

It may not be to your liking, but here is what I would have done:

1. Get Knoppix 6.2.1, burn to CD.
2. Set it up on a USB stick on a CD-bootable computer.
3. Start Knoppix on the troubled PC in either of two ways: If it boots from USB stick, just use that, otherwise boot from the CD, and run from the stick. (Turn off any booting from the HD.)
4. The important command here is: At the boot prompt, write

knoppix fromhd=/dev/sdb1

or whatever the stick will be called. If the hard disk is called /dev/hda, it may be /dev/sda1.
Then you will get Knoppix to ignore the hard disk during booting, and you can mount it and do maintenance on it afterwards.

The fromhd= cheat code didn't work for me in 6.0.1, and 6.2.1 is way better anyway. Except for monitor detection and automatic screen resolution adjustment. With 6.2.1 you may have to use the cheat code screen=1920x1080 (or whatever the monitor does).

I routinely copy the KNOPPIX structure to hard disk, manually, boot from a stick/CD and run from the hard disk. That gives me full control over the Knoppix setup - and my experience is that I can't do with less.

Edit 20100219:
When run from disk, Knoppix 6.X shall be reasonable fast and efficient. If it isn't, there is probably something wrong. But beware of disk full on persistent images. That may give a hang without any notifications, in my experience.
So far, I have also good experience with setting up GRUB to load Knoppix (se my post in News). But I'm not sure how safe that method is if you are not somewhat used to low-level Unix things. It is easy to get something wrong if you don't know fairly well what you are doing.

[inkyfingers]

Thankyou for that Capricorny.
It is good to hear that the fromhd= cheat code didn't work for you in 6.0.1 - I was beginning to think I was reading the wrong manual.
I will go back to the manual and try to learn how to saveconfig.
I did manage a terminal start and shutdown, so I have got knoppix sort of running, but to open a terminal shows CPU fully occupied for 20 seconds, and Iceweasel ditto for full minute but program crashes on loading a fairly simple login page at my ISP.

[inkyfingers]

Problem Solved,
Naive attempt at explanation follows.
Troblesome Machine Spec.
1997 Packard Bell iconnect 1225
WinME installed with "SmartRestore" feature presumably supported from hidden parition1.
Celeron 700MHz RAM 128MB
HD 10 GB (8 GB available to Windows)

DOS fdisk Display Partition Information
PartitionStatus Type Mbytes System Usage
1 non-DOS 1318 13%
C: 2 A Pri DOS 8456 FAT32 86%

Problem solved using Knoppix Linux 6.0.1. Original target to recover data from broken machine achieved. Thanks for the help.
And thanks to the developpers of Knoppix. It is remarkable that Knoppix runs so well on a machine of this vintage.

I think that running the Live CD on this machine is probably not optimal because, left to its own devices, Knoppix tried to use resourses out of partiton 1 which is full to the brim with M$.setup files, unknown, not FAT32, format and did not run out of partion 2 where there was loads of space.
I was reluctant to repartition this borrowed machine.
At first the cheat code tohd=/dev/hda2, simply into "unprepared Windows space" had seemed to fail.
Moreover, while I was uncertain I had achieved an effective install, the cheat code fromhd=/dev/hda2, was missed so that knoppix ran as a Live CD without my understanding.
I found I had to retry the process several times before I achieved both the copying of Knoppix files to hard drive, and the creation of space for knoppix-data.img.
However once done knoppix coexists just fine ... for a newbie.
Thanks

[krishna.murphy]

Problem Solved,
Naive attempt at explanation follows.
Troblesome Machine Spec.
1997 Packard Bell iconnect 1225
WinME installed with "SmartRestore" feature presumably supported from hidden parition1.
Celeron 700MHz RAM 128MB
HD 10 GB (8 GB available to Windows)

DOS fdisk Display Partition Information
PartitionStatus Type Mbytes System Usage
1 non-DOS 1318 13%
C: 2 A Pri DOS 8456 FAT32 86%

Problem solved using Knoppix Linux 6.0.1. Original target to recover data from broken machine achieved. Thanks for the help.
And thanks to the developpers of Knoppix. It is remarkable that Knoppix runs so well on a machine of this vintage.

I think that running the Live CD on this machine is probably not optimal because, left to its own devices, Knoppix tried to use resourses out of partiton 1 which is full to the brim with M$.setup files, unknown, not FAT32, format and did not run out of partion 2 where there was loads of space.
I was reluctant to repartition this borrowed machine.
At first the cheat code tohd=/dev/hda2, simply into "unprepared Windows space" had seemed to fail.
Moreover, while I was uncertain I had achieved an effective install, the cheat code fromhd=/dev/hda2, was missed so that knoppix ran as a Live CD without my understanding.
I found I had to retry the process several times before I achieved both the copying of Knoppix files to hard drive, and the creation of space for knoppix-data.img.
However once done knoppix coexists just fine ... for a newbie.
Thanks

I've experienced some of the files copied onto the hard drive going missing with Knoppix 5; the system would automatically repair that when booting from the CD with the fromhd= cheatcode. Nice, but mysterious, as there was no reason I know for the loss (and it wasn't an NTFS partition, so the known problems with that version's NTFS access.