Saving Configuration/stopping autoconfig?

Ive recently installed to hard drive, and thanks to this forum got my winmodem to work!
im very happy with knoppix overall.
but the boot, it autodetects all the hardware every time.
Is it possible to save the configuration, to avoid this autodetection and improve boot times?

an unrelated topic, my partitions automount, and i can browse them via Konquerer, however some folders are invisible when i ls from their host directory from a terminal window
i have no idea what causes this, but any suggestions/help are appreciated.

Thanks
Shaun Mc Goldrick