Quote Originally Posted by porkrind
it could well be that i did not burn it correctly, however, when i accessed the file through the CD player, it open a Knoppix page, on the machine i burned it on.
Hey! Some actual information we can respond to!

I don't use Alcohol so don't know the exact right way to burn an iso in it, but if you burnt the ISO and the disk behaves as stated above when inserted in a running windows machine then it seems right, from the few details this presents. The Knoppix page that opens should be a result of autorun.ini opening a local html file in your browser. You should also be able to see an entire file structure on the disc, including subdirectories (folders in xp jargon).

You say this happens on the machine i burned it on. It should happen on any running windows system unless CD auto-run has been disabled. Does it happen on the machine where the CD fails to boot? Can that system read the CD? If not then you certainly have a smoking gun and someting to resolve.

Quote Originally Posted by porkrind
on one machine, running winME in defective mode, the CD runs for several minutes, then Win loads. in that case the CD drive cannot be seen for several more minutes, then appears and claims to have no media content.
i am considering how i might format the HDD, and then try the Knoppix disc ?
Do you ever get to the point where you have a boot prompt, or does the several minutes of spinning happen without ever getting that far? Anything at all typed on the screen in the process?

In my experience I see no reason at all why you should be doing anything to the hard disk. On some memory starved systems you might need a swap file or a swap partition, but certainly not if you're not even gettin to the boot prompt. You're focusing on the wrong thing here.

Quote Originally Posted by porkrind
in the other machine, the CD player also fires up for about 2 minutes, then winXP home boots,
(for reference sake, both machines usually lit the CD for about 12 seconds, before boot)
in this machine, i have a winXP fast boot tweak that causes winXP to be found on the drive within 30 seconds and boot. so that tweak might be the problem, although i havent rediscovered it, or found a way to undo it yet.
No tweek that you have in Windows for faster booting is going to be an issue. Knoppix loads clean, Windows is never involved. So if Knoppix is booted from CD the Windows code should never be seen or run, so it's not a cause for a Knoppix boot to fail.

Quite simply, Knoppix doesn't care if you have Win95, Win98se, Win2k, XP, DOS 3, OS2 or anything else on the hard disk (or if you even have a hard disk), the CD boot should not be affected. The only exceptiion to this is it will use a swap partition if it finds one, or if it's really staved for memory and there is no swap partition it may ask if it can ceate a swap file (but will never make one if it doesn't ask of if there is not a partition available that it can write to safely. If you are not getting to the boot prompt then none of this is an issue. If you are then it would have been nice to mention that, as there are several things that can be typed at that point that might help you boot, will check your CD and the ability to read it, and even run an extensive memory test.