I have read lots of good things abot Knoppix and I am currently in the process of downloading it. I hope it will help my problem. Let me know if you think it will and if you have any suggestions.

My PCs hard drive is lost.... I am trying to recover it. Most of my friends are Mac users.

I bought another (internal) hard drive and was trying to install it. It showed up fine in Windows Device Manager but would not show up in My Computer (with a drive letter). I tried putting the jumper on it to make sure that it was reading as a slave drive but that didnt make a difference(yes, the power was off). during this process I got the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death! I get a split second BSOD. then it goes to a screen saying windows could not start. It will not let me start in ANY mode. when it shows the start up log it hangs up on Windows/system32/drivers/iomdisk.sys. i can boot with boot floppy but it will only read the C drive partition with the HP restore files on it. I cannot access the D drive partition which has WINDOWS. I even tried taking out the old hard drive and making it a slave on my husband's machine. No luck there either.

I have tried to use the HP restore cds that came with my computer but it will not let me use them and says that I can only use these disks on a HP machine (which I am) and to contact HP support ( I am waiting for a return email).
I looked online regarding iomdisk.sys and it seem like it is my external zip drive driver that is causing a memory allocation issue. Others it seems have had this problem and they have just gone in and deleted the iomdisk.sys file and the computer started. However I cannot get to my D partition. DAMN IOMEGA and that blasted zip drive. I am going to go smash it with a hammer in the driveway. I had just kept it around because I had some files on Zips. I just took them off the zips and burned a DVD last week of just about ALL my necessary files but I just want my hard drive back!!! BTW. I unplugged the 2nd hard drive as soon as BSOD happened.

do you think that by using knoppix I might get to see the missing partition so that I can retrive my files and possibly delete the offending driver?