I have a hp pavilion ze4500 I'm using knoppix 3.8.1 & 3.9.1 Both will boot and both will run, albeit with some glitches, I have an AMD Athlon 2400+ w/1024MB DDR SDRAM. It has booted best w/ the noacpi option. Be sure your disk is clean and that the download will pull up on a comparable desktop (so you know it works). I tried every version from 3.3 through 3.7 without success. It wasn't until the adition of the unionfs that I was finaly able to access the I-net. I did get 3.6 to boot and while I got 3.7 to boot it kept crashing no matter What I did. Like I suggested I did use 3.7 on the home desktop a hp pavilion 733n. If the salesperson isn't willing to let you boot a live CD standing beside you (he might learn something) then you really don't need to purchase from them. There ARE other sources to purchase, especially when they know that the ability of the equiptment to load your disk is a purchase point.
I wish you good luck and I have heard that some of the intel chip/cpu's will not run Knoppix/linux uner any conditions.

Captain Cautious
07.20.05