Live CD Booting Questions

[aerowing]

I attempted to load Knoppix from CD onto my XP system (AMD Athlon 64 ) and everthing seemed fine, but no desktop loaded- only black screen.
I them re-ran setup using FAILSAFE boot and was able to boot to desktop, however my mouse did not work.Keyboard worked fine. However this did not detect all my hardware.
I have 2 mice installed. One is optical scroll mouse in PS/2 port - the other is wireless mouse (USB)
I did try to boot with USB mouse unplugged, hoping that other mouse would work but nothing. Could it be because it is optical mouse?

Took the CD to work and was able to install fine on both my Pentium XP network workstation and an also older Windows 98 PentiumII machine.

Any suggestions on where I begin as far as my booting problems on my home machine? Why would the system hang at black screen when trying to do normal boot during hardware detection.
Many thanks

[Harry Kuhman]

... Could it be because it is optical mouse?....

PS2 optical mice generally work fine with Knoppix (as far as the interface is concerned the software doesn't treat it any different than a mechanical mouse, the optical stuff is all done in a micro on the mouse). I don't know what the problem is, but I doubt very much that this is it.

You might try looking at the BIOS and see if you have any settings that might apply. Look for cryptic things such as "legacy support". It may also help to post the make and model of the computer, and make and date of the BIOS, someone with the same hardware might come across it and know your issue.