Ok I want to start this by saying I'm a newbie at anything Linux and I just downloaded Knoppix. I downloaded it because I want to clean my brothers computer of a virus and I can't do it under windows, but that's not the point. I tried booting with knoppix and it worked until I got a "Out of range" error from the monitor on my brother's PC. I tried everything I knew of and only the failsafe mode worked but I couldn't use the mouse..bummer. But I got around to deleting the file I wanted...

Then I wanted to try it on my notebook ( compaq presario 2105us ) equipped with 512 meg DDR and a ATI radeon Mobility video card. I could see the booth screen but when I hit enter to boot the screen goes black and it seems like the OS hangs. I can't hear the cd spinning or the computer working. The only way it works is if I run it in failsafe mode but then my mouse and keyboard ( the mouse being the touchpad and the keyboard being the notebook keyboard ) don't seem to work and the OS takes an aweful lot of time to load... my computer is a 1.8 ghz (AMD) and my brothers is a 500 ghz (Intel) but the OS loads faster on my brothers PC. All in all, I can't do anything on my notebook with Knoppix and I really can't run knoppix on my brothers PC other than with failsafe mode.

Can anybody help me with this... I really don't know Linux or Knoppix enough to get through that alone

Thanks

Max