I thank you for all the great tips. You have to remember that
there are two machines we are talking about, my desktop and
my laptop.

The laptop probably has USB driver issues, but those can be
resolved. The desktop has boot problems, and they do not
involve the integrity of the d/l, burn, or reading of the cd.

The desktop WILL boot and run some other live cd's.
Knoppix will not boot from either of my 2 cd-roms, one of which
is a cd-rw. (separate tests...each set up as secondary master.)

The real question is, what is issuing this message, and what
does it mean? Where is the penguin when you need him?

Eratta: I used DeepBurner to burn the CD at 4x,
and NBD means "No Big Deal".