OK, I figured out how to run KNOPPIX with neither the CD nor the boot floppy from the hdd without knx-hdinstall. I don't like knx-hdinstall as you loose all the KNOPPIX autodetection stuff!

Here are my steps (only for WIN95/98/ME on a VFAT partition):
(1) On your M$ WINDOZE box, mine is WINME, create a directory called c:\KNOPPIX.

(2) Copy from d:\KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX, the huge 690MB file on the KNOPPIX CD already burned from an ISO, to c:\KNOPPIX.

(3) Copy the files vmlinuz and miniroot.gz from the boot floppy, already rawritten from boot-en.img, to c:\KNOPPIX.

(4) Download a copy of loadlin.exe to c:\KNOPPIX from the net.

(5) Write the following batch file in Notepad, save as knoppix.bat in c:\KNOPPIX, its all one line.

loadlin.exe vmlinuz lang=en init=/etc/init initrd=miniroot.gz quiet BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix

(6) In WIN95 or 98, make a shortcut for knoppix.bat on your desktop. You can't run a batch file in real-mode DOS with WINME, you have to run knoppix.bat from the rescue disk in console mode....

(7) Click on this shortcut and viola KNOPPIX boots faster from your hdd than from your CD, and it still autodetects everything and resides in the ramdisk.

BTW, one side effect is that you cannot mount your hdd as its busy reading from KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX just as the CD used to be tied up.

Also, if you do not want to rawrite the boot floppy or burn the CD, you can mount the ISO and IMG to extract the files KNOPPIX, vmlinuz and miniroot.gz (but you need a Linux box for this already - which came first the penguin or the egg???).