See my post 'Networking works...then it doesn't'. Exactly the same problem. Workaround should be to stop knoppix-hd-config from attempting to restart the netcard.

file is /etc/init.d/knoppix-hd-config, find the appropriate section & cahnge to read as follows:

Code:
if [ -n "$STARTPCMCIA" ]
then
	echo "(Re)starting PCMCIA services."
#	killall cardmgr 2>/dev/null && sleep 4
	echo "restarting cardmgr..."
	cardmgr -v && sleep 4
fi
Another problem you may bump into: Samba was set to autostart as part of runlevel 5 services. When I first tried this workaround, the system froze trying to start smbd. So use sys-v-edit & remove samba from the services autostarted in runlevel first.

Hope somebody can help out with a better solution on this one.