I am brand new to the world of Linux, and I am hoping that someone can help me resolve a problem I am having while running knoppix (v4.0) from a live_cd. When I try to boot from the CD without using any "cheats" the process hangs when it gets to 'Scanning for Harddisk partitions and creating /etc/fstab...'. I am able to work around this problem by using 'nofstab', but once everything is up and running, I am not able to find any /hd* folders on the desktop. I've tried to mount the drive manually but have not had any luck so far. The computer I am using is an old Toshiba laptop with windows XP (one hard drive single partition), so I know I can not write to the hard drive, but I would like to be able to read from it. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!