new to all this, but can't work out what to do

[ginestre]

Hello people out there

I've been wanting to ditch windows for a long time but pressure of work has meant I haven't had time to look into it till now. This Knoppix idea looks really interesting: so I want to have a go. I've downloaded an ISO image, and written it to a CD, and followed all of the instructions I could find. I read the first ten pages or so of Knowing Knoppix. I put the CD in drive D, and rebooted the computer. I changed the boot options in my BIOS so that it looks first at the CD.

But knopix doesn't boot. The PC waits for a long time before deciding to offer me the option of re-installing windoes as a second o/s along with the windows I already have

What have I done wrong? Help!

Thanks.

[Harry Kuhman]

Hello people out there

I've been wanting to ditch windows for a long time but pressure of work has meant I haven't had time to look into it till now. This Knoppix idea looks really interesting: so I want to have a go. I've downloaded an ISO image, and written it to a CD, and followed all of the instructions I could find. I read the first ten pages or so of Knowing Knoppix. I put the CD in drive D, and rebooted the computer. I changed the boot options in my BIOS so that it looks first at the CD.

But knopix doesn't boot. The PC waits for a long time before deciding to offer me the option of re-installing windoes as a second o/s along with the windows I already have

What have I done wrong? Help!

Thanks.

This sounds like you did it wrong, you don't write the ISO to a CD, you burn the ISO to a CD as an image. You didn't bother to tell us what software you use or exactly what steps you took in your burning software, so I can't tell you the exact steps to take or where you wnet wrong (and can't even be sure this is the problem). Read the downloading faq reached by the documentation link at the top of this page. Also important: If you downloaded the ISO from a mirror rather than Bittorrent, check the md5 checksum before you burn (if you don't want to bother with this, go back to Windows). Burn the disk at a low speed (I suggest 4x), not as fast as your burner will burn it.

[ginestre]

This sounds like you did it wrong, you don't write the ISO to a CD, you burn the ISO to a CD as an image. You didn't bother to tell us what software you use or exactly what steps you took in your burning software, so I can't tell you the exact steps to take or where you wnet wrong (and can't even be sure this is the problem). Read the downloading faq reached by the documentation link at the top of this page. Also important: If you downloaded the ISO from a mirror rather than Bittorrent, check the md5 checksum before you burn (if you don't want to bother with this, go back to Windows). Burn the disk at a low speed (I suggest 4x), not as fast as your burner will burn it.[/quote]

Thank you for replying so quickly. You are right that I didn't give as much information as I could have; and I am sure I used all of the wrong technical words - the world is full of eager, willing but ill-informed people such as myself, and that is why we're so grateful for your time, effort and help. Don't be cross: it really often isn't a question of not wanting to bother, but of not being able to find a way into the closed worlds of jargon that just fence us out... Many of us here on the "technical outside" would love to get rid of Gates, but don't have time to plough through reams of (often unclear) info just to see if our intuitions might work. I'm personally at the moment trying to see if we can get rid of gates on all of the pcs at the school where I teach, because we waste so much time updateing and upgrading and throwing old hw out... but I have to do this in my own time and with the meagre resources that I can develop or that others kindly put at my disposal... Checking your list of things that I should have done I find that I did them all, except for *burning* the cd at full speed. I don't know if that makes any difference, but I'm re-burning it at 4x to see. I'm using Nero under XP with gigas of free space and 256 of RAM, AMD 1300 processor. I don'tknow how to check the md5 of my image file because it's new to me, and the documentation link you pointed me at tells me what to do under linux- which I don't yet have

forbearance

[fingers99]

Take a peek at this and the links on the left hand side of the page.

But I think Harry is right: it does sound like a bad burn.

[Harry Kuhman]

..... I'm using Nero under XP with gigas of free space and 256 of RAM, AMD 1300 processor. I don'tknow how to check the md5 of my image file because it's new to me, and the documentation link you pointed me at tells me what to do under linux- which I don't yet have

I don't know which version of Nero or what choices you made, so I still do not know if you burned the iso properly. Nero can burn an ISO file properly, but it can also write a copy of the iso to the hard disk as one big file. If you look at the CD after burning it (under windows) do you see an entire file structure on the CD or one big iso file?

md5 checking is important. You could have just gone to Google and searched for the term md5 or even used the search link at the top of this page and found lots of discussion about it on this forum (almost all applying to just this problem). I like the md5 tool available at http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewfor...60f603908515ba but anyWindows md5 tool should work.