stuck on "scanning for harddisk partitions..."

I wanted to have Knoppix from CD. I burned the *.iso file (version 3.6) and booted from it. I choose the option "knoppix" and got all kinds of messages ("good" ones, about detecting which CPU, mouse and all). However, when it gets to:

"scanning for harddisk partitions and creating /etc/fstab..."

it gets stuck for long minutes. Nothing happens. The CDROM and Harddisk are not making any sounds of "working". Just stuck and nothing else happens.

Any ideas what to do?

Maybe try a few cheatcodes at boot-time like:-

knoppix nodma

or a combonation of many.