I think that was part of the problem.....the 2.6 kernel. I was using it more because it let me use my optical usb mouse. 2.4 kernel wouldnt and i tried everything under the sun to get it to work. I ran 2.6 kernel and whadda ya know.....the optical mouse worked! But the next day for some reason my cdrom would not mount. So I had thought about re-installing knoppix again with another LINUX distro just for the hell of it but when i tried i had too many boot problems. So I downloaded Knoppix v. 3.7 and installed.....works great.....So i guess i can deal with no optical mouse for now.....as long as my cdrom is working...bob58