KDE Freezing at Desktop, Knoppix 5.1.1

[Jorpho]

Greetings all,

I have a brand-new Compaq Presario SR2150NX (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...339274&lang=en), and the default Knoppix 5.1.1 configuration freezes up at the KDE desktop before I can do anything. The desktop icons start to appear, but then the mouse "throbber" suddenly stops moving along with the mouse, and a second or two later the mouse cursor stops responding entirely. Ctrl-Alt-Backspace does nothing.

Knoppix still works fine without any problems if I use desktop=icewm or desktop=fluxbox. Knoppix 4.0 works fine in KDE as well, though it doesn't seem to detect the SATA drive. Maybe that has something to do with it?

[Jorpho]

Any ideas on what else I can do to diagnose the problem?

[Jorpho]

I'm still curious about this.

[Jorpho]

Anybody? Perhaps there's some way I can force Knoppix to use an alternative SATA driver, or stop the KDE desktop from looking for the partitions?