Knoppix halts checking for USB

[New2Knoppix]

I lost a desktop computer in a terrible lightning strike. Adding insult to injury, my laptop, which was not even plugged in, got zapped, too. It was fierce – lightbulbs burst out of the fixtures and all. It was a direct hit – my neighbor’s tree got toasted. But anyway, I digress.

My laptop, on which I’ve got tons of business invoices and pictures (I’m a photographer) now halts at agp440.sys on boot in Windows safe mode. After pulling my hair out for the last 6 months trying to solve the agp440.sys problem, I read about Knoppix.

Thought it might be a promising alternative, so I downloaded it and am trying it for the first time. The .iso burn went great, and I have a working bootable Knoppix. On the laptop (a.k.a. “zaptop”), it hangs up on “Checking for USB…”

I tried disabling USB legacy support in BIOS, then enabling it, and still it hangs on USB. Lord, I don’t need USB!! All I want to do is get one last crack at that HDD to get the invoices and event photos off it… I’ve already written the laptop off as a gonner (bought a new computer – the one I’m typing this on).

If you can shed some light (eww, no pun intended) on my situation, I'd appreciate it. Is there some way I can disable USB in Knoppix? If you answer, please talk to me like I'm a moron, because my experience w/Linux is the 5 minutes I spent making this CD (which is very cool, by the way).

Thanks!

[mzilikazi]

Easy. Simply use a cheatcode at the boot prompt:

nousb