problems booting

[Castershell]

I tried booting 3.4 on a Dell Optiplex GX150 earlier, and as it was mounting (2.4 kernel, normal setup) it freezes when detecting the cdrom, and then gives me an error saying it can't find the knoppix filesystem, and drops me into a "very limited shell" or something. Well, the cd-rom is there, it was listed as hdc right above that, and I'm wondering what the deal is. This is a classroom set of GX150s, and I'm on 3.4 on an identical pc right now. Only the problematic one has something wrong with it's windows install (says it can't find the system folder, was just gonna go in with knoppix and replace the files). But apparently I can't do that. any ideas?

[UnderScore]

Check out the knoppix cheatcodes http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/CheatCodes. I also get the same error on some PCs. The code I would use at the boot up splash screen is: knoppix nodma
If that does not work, reference the above link and try others like noapic or failsafe.
As a side note, some people had problems with Dell Optiplex systems. If I recall correctly, they had to get a new bios from the dell support site and flash the machine to the lastest version. Search these forums for the phrase dell optiplex to find out more about this.
I hope this helps.
James