Harry
Well, the lightbulb turns on! Indeed I was expecting that the existing programs would run, but silly me.
What I want to do is scan the whole HD for viruses and adware that may be slowing things down. It takes forever to boot and change programs and I worry that there may be some badguy lurking where the usual Norton and Spybot cant detect. Thus my interest in knoppix to scan from CD while the HD is not in use.

May I assume there is a program or two on the Knoppix disc to help me?

Many thanks for your thoughts.

JB