Harry ,
i formated the defective winME machine and installed winXPhome it has 64M RAM, AMD K2 500, Compaq
it still will not boot Knoppix, it does not get to a command prompt during boot w/ the Knoppix CD in the drive.
machine 1 boots to COMPAQ display, the little prompt ? (-)(when you can hit the F8 key to enter safe mode) appears top left, then a larger (-) appears top right then boots to winXP boot sreen
machine 2 has winXPhome w/ 526M RAM, Intel Cel 700, it also will not boot Knoppix , it does not get to a command prompt for Knoppix either.

once these machines have booted to winXP, the CD Drive (D, claims to have no CD in them ( please insert CD in drive)

could it be that these CD Drives cant read CD-R ? ( i have run CD-R in them both before, but only after windows boots to desktop.
or do i not understand the "set to boot from CD" or what you mean by CD autorun ?
i have both machines set in BIOS to : CD first, floppy second, HDD third
is this where i am missing something ?

thank you.