Quote Originally Posted by Jacky
This suggest the MBR is hosed. You can try booting up with a Windows Recovery CD or the Windows Install CD and go into the Recovery Console and do a "fixmbr".

For your info, I followed all your steps with a test system of my own - deleted a XP partition, guessed the partition with gpart, wrote it out, set hda1 active, rebooted, got the big black screen........but then Knoppix did not hang - it could detect the partition. Then I quit Knoppix, used Windows CD to fixmbr, and it could boot Windows again.
Well, I was originally using Knoppix to try and fix it because I had some sort of hardware problem and was receiving a stop error when the Windows Installation/Recovery CD finished booting up.

So, I decided to take my HDD with me to work. I got it to boot up with the Windows disc and Knoppix. However, using gpart (knoppix) and then fixmbr (windows disc) didn't end up working. I was getting the message "Missing operating system." So, after tinkering for a bit I ended up using the Windows disc to create a fresh install of Windows XP at the beginning of the HDD. I got that working. Then I tried to mark the old XP partition active with Windows Disk Management; which messed it up. So, I deleted the new XP partiton, recreated it, and then installed it again. I got it working at work, created new user accounts for my family, and was just generally excited.

Brought it home and now Windows is restarting itself before it even starts to load. It then takes me to the advanced boot options where it lists Safe Mode, Last Known Good Configuration, etc. I've chosen everything and it appears to be booting, flashes what appears to be the blue screen of death/stop error for one second, and then restarts. I tried using the Windows disc and receive the same STOP error. However, Knoppix is now booting up perfectly fine.

I've come to the conclusion that it's a hardware problem, but don't think my family will buy it as it was working okay before hand (with the exception of the random reboots from time to time). I know that support for STOP errors is pretty minimal and not very thorough.

Quote Originally Posted by Jacky
Searching this forum or Googling about Knoppix hanging while scanning for hardidisks or creating fstab may give you some ideas. Some posts suggest this indicates a hardware error. But there's no need to give up hope yet. Try these boot cheatcodes at the Knoppix boot prompt:

knoppix nodma
knoppix nofstab
or both, i.e. knoppix nodma nofstab
If you all have any suggestions please let me know. Anyway, thanks for all of the advice and help thus far.

P.S. I got to reset the admin password on the XP installation with my Knoppix disc. Very useful software, but there's a bit of a learning curve as it's not as intuitive as XP....just my opinion.