Getting to understand the original poster on this thread. After 8 yes 8 rewrites of a CD eventually got one to boot. OK you genii I hadn't checked the MD5, (but I was confident in my download (never had a problem with cuteFTP in years!) When I then checked it, it was OK anyway! Wrote several CD's with Nero, (another piece of software which has been problem free under Windows). For no apparent reason got one that works. BTW tried 4x didn't work, 8x did.

I finally get system to boot with Knoppix, and it hangs at the X11 prompt! This is getting silly, I originally thought wouldn't it be good if I could learn a bit about Linux, so maybe set up a test Apache / MySQL server. I realised there would be a bit of a learning curve, but cannot see an end in sight. I used to be a proficient techie, but am now researching for small web business. Installed several ports of Unix in past though now forgot most of it, never had the same problems as with this. I read most of the posts on this thread and they are from people a long way in front of me, I shudder to think how a typical user would manage with this implemetation of Linux.