Can't get Knoppix to boot from CD, laptop still tries to load XP

[mclark]

Back story:

Hi all, I'm hoping someone might be able to help. I have an HP Pavilion dv9700 that had been running WinXP. Everything was fine until a few weeks ago, when I started getting messages saying that my copy of Windows XP had to be reactivated. I'm not sure why I started getting that message, but I think it was due to a virus - a few days before I started getting the message, I got a weird message basically trying to extort money from me to unlock my machine. My machine was basically locked up, but I found a way to disable the process that was causing it to lockup (by killing the process in task manager before it had a chance to fully execute). I thought I had fixed the problem, but then a few days later I started getting a message at bootup saying I had to reactivate Windows within 3 days. Long story less long, the reactivation process was all screwed up and didn't display properly, so I wasn't able to even try to reactivate XP. After the 3 days, I was unable to get into XP at all. To make matters worse, I couldn't get into safe mode either; every safe mode option gave me a BSOD.

As it relates to Knoppix:

Since getting into Windows seemed impossible and I really need to get the files off my laptop hard drive, I decided to try to use Knoppix. I downloaded Knoppix 6.2 & burned it to a DVD, but when I tried booting from it (after setting it to boot from the DVD drive first), all that would happen is a cursor would blink for a few seconds in the top left of the screen, then it continued booting XP like it had before. I know the DVD is good because I'm able to boot into Knoppix on another laptop with no problem. It seems that my laptop is looking at the DVD before going back to boot from HD, but I can't figure out why Knoppix isn't loading.

Any ideas? Should I try a different version of Knoppix? An earlier version or a later version? I got v6.2 basically just because it was a smaller download than the latest versions, and I figured that pretty much any version should work for what I'm trying to use it for. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

----------
Moved thread to "MS Windows & New to Linux" by moderator
wps