chown error at start

Every time I start, I get a list of errors of chown trying to change permission for every file on the KNOPPIX directory, and saying that the file system is unreadable. Then, I get the error that KDE cannot start because there is only 68 KB available (when there is much more). I never had the problem before, until I saved my configuration files one time after booting to run level 2 (before I was always in run level 5, and never had a problem). This is with KNOPPIX 3.2 4-15-2003.