Can't boot Version 3.8.2 on a Dell Dimension 8250

[Harry Kuhman]

Dumb me! I was misusing md5summer. When I backed off the root directory to F:\KNOPPIX, it faithfully checked md5 for all 41 files on the disk. The disk is good. The computer won't boot from it.

NO, The 41 files that you checked match their md5 checksums. That does not mean that the disk is good (although it certainly could be), it means that the 41 files you checked are good. It does not mean that the boot code is good, that is a part of the disk that you're not even looking at. And it does not mean that the CD will boot on your system, which you say it does not.

We're back to my two suggestions: Smart Boot Manager, which you seem to ignore when I suggest it, and getting your own copy of the ISO and burning it slowly.

[jkellyjr]

Thanks for putting up with my stupidity. I finally solved the problem in the most dumbly simple fashion. My machine has a DVD-ROM drive as the E: drive (Secondary 0) and a CD-RW drive as the F: drive (Secondary 1). Just putting the bootable CD into the DVD drive and using the F12 boot menu to select "Boot from IDE CD-ROM" made everything work. As a bonus, the DVD drive reads CDs at 48X compared to the 40X of my CD-RW. If I want to obsess my way into the ultimate "purist" state (boot the CD from the CD-RW drive), all I have to do is deactivate the DVD drive in CMOS Setup (it will still work in Windows XP). I'm glad I didn't have to bill anyone for all the wasted hours figuring this one out!

Although I haven't had much time to play with it yet, the Knoppix disk is a kick -- what a ton of stuff crammed onto it. The only thing I couldn't get to work was my Direcway Internet connection, because it uses a USB modem with proprietary software that loads from the C: drive. However they just floated an offer that allows free conversion to their latest Ethernet-based modem that has self-contained software. All the Knoppix should have to do to make the connection is recognize the NIC.

Regarding your comment about taking my ISP business elsewhere, when you live in rural Northern Vermont, you don't have any high-speed options other than Direcway (download speed varies between 200K and 3M). Before I installed that service I spend an entire month hassling with Verizon to get them to find me a phone line that could even see the Internet. The first line they hooked up connected at a generous 1,200 bits/sec -- yes, bits, not Kb. I used to get that speed in 1984 with an old, blue Motorola modem the size of a fax machine. When they finally got it up to 26K, I sensed nirvana. Your suggestion about using Bittorrent interruptible downloads to bypass Direcway's limits sounds great -- I'll have to try it.

Thanks again,

Joe