Quote Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman
Pretty strange, considering that you seem to have done the right things. I'll assume that the Nero verification confirmed a good burn, which would also confirm that you used a 700 meg CD and not a 650 meg cd. I really don't know what the problem is. It might help to know a bit about your hardware, particularly the type of disc drive you are booting off of (It's not a USB CD, is it?). The only other thing that I can suggest is boot the CD again and at the prompt type memtest to run memtest86. I really doubt that is going to find the problem, but it would be foolish to not be sure at this point.
Yes, nero verified a good burn. I was going to do a testcd afterwards anyway just to be sure, but i can't even do that because of the problem. (I didn't even know there were 650 MB CDs lol [my CDs do say 700 MB on the CD's label])

anyway, it's a relatively new computer. only a month old, got it from dell.

memtest, well, i let it run for 15 minutes. that's how long it took for that top "PASS %" (not the one under it that said "TEST #X %") meter to get to 100%, then it started over and I just rebooted because it looked like it was just doing the same thing over again. there was a 1 under the pass column, and a zero under the error column. if it didn't do some test, just say so and i'll let it run for a while again.

no, the cd drive isn't USB, unless it's internally a USB (doubt it). Device Manager in Vista says "HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GSA-H73N ATA Device". That probably doesn't help.
Anyway, it's also got a generic Integrated Intel GPU, an Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.2 GHz, and 1 GB of RAM. Dual Booted with Vista and XP.

I'm trying to stay away from using the hard drive at all. Ideally, I want to be able to not even load the drivers for the hard drives under knoppix, because Vista has already crashed on me twice and the hard drive causes MASSIVE slowdown when it does, until I do a system restore to a previous date. (The hard drive just goes on a churning spree and churns like crazy even when it doesn't make sense, like in the BIOS screen, or when booted to a CD)

anyway, any other suggestions?