Quote Originally Posted by mdhorton
So, if I am understanding you correctly, I am not losing any functionality by starting in failsafe, except for some convience of haveing Knoppix detect and setup everything for me.
Correct. I'm sure you are familiar with standard troubleshooting procedures- simplify, make it work at its minimal configuration and then add complexity to the issue. You have lost nothing by booting failsafe.

Everything is working ok, except the devices previously mentioned. I can burn cd's now. Could you tell me the relation of the horizontal and vertical sync rates. What I mean is, when I try to change my monitor, which is not listed, it only has a place to put in horizontal sync and vertical sync. I have not been able to find these #'s but I know the LCD can do 1600x1200.
It seems that you are using the KDE control center to make these adjustments. As I understand it you will need to reboot for any changes regarding your monitor made in the KDE control center to take effect. The actual configuration is in

/etc/X11/XFree86Config-4

If your resolution, hsync, vsync & color depth aren't listed you could add them. You may be able to see the format from the way the file is written. IIRC there are a multitude of resolutions, scan rates, color depth combinations available. Knoppix has a "one size fits all" XFree86Config-4 file. It's comparitively HUGE in an attempt to work on as many machines as possible.

Also, if I start the apm daemon the machine locks in KDE after a few minutes. It would be nice to know how much battery time is left but not a neccessity.
I'm afraid I'm not much help on that particualr issue. Of course there is always

/var/log/syslog

That may give you some insight on what's happening. Have you tried it with another desktop- ICEWM for example?