hp v2000 laptop and ?broken? knoppix 6.0.1 install

Sirs:laptop sees live distro, no problem
performed live distro install using the entire disk (40gb)
pop up announced grub requirement to see knoppix os; used grub option but reboot (after installation) gives just a blinking cursor?

started over with new install; did everything the same but this time got the grub boot loader (?) with "knoppix" option on boot loader screen. It should work!

Alas, it dosen't work; fdisk shows hda1 as 1gb swap,ok
fdisk shows hda2 as /, ok
after choosing 'knoppix' option from boot loader, I get the following error message, "Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by bios "
initially I felt it was a translation problem which requires toggle of the C,H, and S in expert mode (in this case the Cylinder value), no joy
so maybe I really do need a bios update? hmm :!:

I use to get old HDDs to work with ext2 and ext3 with really no experience with reiserfs other than one or two successful SUSE Linux installs (u don't learn anything until something goes wrong)
Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated