Knoppix on new Sony Vaio - no dma, no USB 2.0 speed

I have a new Sony Vaio (its at work, I'm at home, so don't remember the exact model, but its brand new) - not one of those lightweight ones, but the big one with on-board CD. I have an external usb 2.0 hd hooked up thru a usb 2.0 PCMCIA card for extra file storage.

Problem 1 - I'm using Knoppix 3.2 (could be the issue, but.....) and it booted very slowly (about 5 min.). At first I tried to boot to command prompt only and it worked, but I was obviously getting only usb 1.1 speed to the hd. Also, though I used the cheatcode "knoppix dma 2", dma was actually not enabled (from dmesg). Why? How do I fix this?

Problem 2 - I let the thing boot to the GUI and it seemed that I was now getting usb 2.0 speed, but still no dma acceleration. Why? How do I fix this?

These problems don't exist on any other computer model that I've used Knoppix on.

Thanks in advance. :D