I went back to basics and finding that I couldn't boot from a floppy, I looked under the bonnet and found that the cable to the FDC was not pushed home.
I have now extracted the files I need from the HDD.
I cannot access the PC's second hard disk from Windows but I can see it with Knoppix.
I can change its properties so that it's not Read-only, but when I attempt to delete anything, I doesn't allow me.
What I really want to do is format the drive before junking it.
Thank you for your replies - I haven't reached the stage of working with raw linux! I'm still working with the safety net of 'windows'!
Echo