Hi folks,
I am trying to figure out the basics of using Knoppix with persistent disk image. As many others, I'm just trying to get Knoppix to run on my system with the ability to save my settings and stuff.
I downloaded and burned Knoppix 6.2.1 on CD and it works fine from there.
Then I did a flash-install onto my external USB HDD (all the forums and FAQs talk about flash drives, I'm not sure if there is any significant difference between that and an external HDD).
Then I fiddled with the BIOS settings a bit so that the USB HDD would come before the internal HDD which has Vista installed. I think I did that correctly but can't say for sure - see problem below.

Now when the system boots from the USB HDD everything works fine, I was initially prompted for the storage size, and stuff is automatically saved to the disk - Yay...

After playing around a bit more I noticed that whenever I do a shutdown the system will boot Vista from the internal HDD, or Knoppix from the CD if its in the drive, but not from the USB HDD. Further experiments showed that the only situation in which the system booted from the USB HDD is if I first boot from the Knoppix CD then do a reboot (but not a shutdown). After that I can do further reboots and it will continue booting from the USB HDD but as soon as I shut down (or if I intentionally go back to Vista by disconnecting the USB HDD), the only way to go back to booting from the USB HDD is via the CD as described above.

Does this make sense at all? I'm not too familiar with how boot sequences work so I can only guess that when I do a reboot from Knoppix (either USB or CD) it tells the BIOS something that makes it boot correctly the next time, but that "something" isn't there after shutting down or after launching Vista.

From other posts I see that I could probably use the CD with a cheatcode to launch from the USB but I don't want to do that for 2 reasons -
1 - I want to get rid of the CD dependency if possible
2 - I want to be able to boot without cheat codes for a friendlier user experience

Any help would be appreciated.
BTW it would be great if someone knowledgeable would update the "Live CD tips" FAQ page. It is clearly outdated and this is basic information that most newcomers (like myself) need to get started.