After a good deal of googling, and using the live Cd, and reading though many config files under /etc/, I finally found out how to get changed hardware (I had swapped nics with another box, some time ago and didn't remember this until recently) updated.

And the answer is ...

/etc/init.d/knoppix-hd-autoconfig

After running this manually and rebooting, everything works OK now.

HTH anyone else who has an issue. If you have problems and the live cd works OK on the same box, try using this to correct problems of new hardware installed in the box.