After installing both Knoppix and Kanotix to hard drive, I'm finding with both of them I struggle to get anything working when logged in as a user.
I'm getting identical problems in both -
No sound effect/sound scheme but music players work.
When trying to connect to the internet via my dial-up modem, I either get a message saying unable to open modem or it be starts and gets as far as initializing but then it just freezes.
When trying to run Firefox or Thunderbird they are asking me to create a new profile (even though I have copied one across from a previous install) but when I try to create them it says I don't have write access to my home folder.
On both Kanotix and Knoppix, I'm using the user created during the (Debian style) install and on both everything works perfectly when logged in as root.
I've tried creating new users but I can't seem to do anything at all then.
I'm really at the end of my tether with this. If I can't get it sorted soon I'm just going to have to delete the user accounts and run as root all the time.

[EDIT] Apologies, although it does mention my modem, I actually meant to post this in the general forum.