Hello, have burned knoppix and am trying to get it to boot on a Dell Dimension 8200

cpu: 2Ghz
Mem 256mb RDR
has both DVD +R and CDROM

I am currently running WinXP at Home
Have 2 hdds
one 40gb with my windows
one 80gb with a linix partition (failed Mandrake install)
and 40gb win partion

When I try to boot into kmnoppix, it finds my hard drives and also the optical drives as all hda, hdb, hdc and hdd

then it looks for the cdrom and usually starts at dev/sda1 and just blinks and blinks until my power saver kicks in, at one time it made it to dev/sda7 but that was over 30 mins of time.

If I can't use knoppix, what can I use, I really want to get into linux.

Thanks
Ron