booting of winxp sp2 vaio after knoppix 5.2 "fails"

[mken]

Hallo folks,
Info :Using knoppix 5.2 from c't magazine 7/2007 and following their instructions. One San Cruzer usb micro and 4 wd external harddrives (chained with firewire 400)

I tried knoppix (for the 1st time) last night on a sony vaio pcg 791m with win xp home edition sp2.
knoppix booted fine after i set "knoppix nopcmcia" - very impressive.
In the X windows environment everything was fine (except that the left hand mouse button did not work, but
I have this behaviour occasionally in winxp too since installing IE7! - so I'm off to buy a usb mouse anyway)

The real problem came after quitting the session properly. The machine went down, i removed the dvd. Then I switched the laptop on again. Everything seemed to be ok, but after some time when lights on the external drives flickered, the light in the usb stick went off. After this nothing more happened. The screen displayed the winxp logo with the progress bar moving left to right and back again.
I was in a mild panic. No control key worked - so I switched off the laptop.
I disconnected the usb stick and firewire cable.
On reboot I was given the chance to select last good configuration - but I just selected "normal".
The winxp booted successfully!
I plugged in the usb stick - fine.
Connected and switched on firewire - again fine.

I am quite relieved to have winxp back (if only because all my work's there, not because I'm a winxp fan!).

My question (finally) is:
Is this "normal" behaviour? - if so does anyone know why this might be so (knoppix is read only right)?
Should I go ahead and try knoppix again? - I'd like to, but I'm worried...
All help/advice/encouragement greatly appreciated.

Mike

[chip.ling]

Hallo folks,
Info :Using knoppix 5.2 from c't magazine 7/2007 and following their instructions. One San Cruzer usb micro and 4 wd external harddrives (chained with firewire 400)

I tried knoppix (for the 1st time) last night on a sony vaio pcg 791m with win xp home edition sp2.
knoppix booted fine after i set "knoppix nopcmcia" - very impressive.
In the X windows environment everything was fine (except that the left hand mouse button did not work, but
I have this behaviour occasionally in winxp too since installing IE7! - so I'm off to buy a usb mouse anyway)

The real problem came after quitting the session properly. The machine went down, i removed the dvd. Then I switched the laptop on again. Everything seemed to be ok, but after some time when lights on the external drives flickered, the light in the usb stick went off. After this nothing more happened. The screen displayed the winxp logo with the progress bar moving left to right and back again.
I was in a mild panic. No control key worked - so I switched off the laptop.
I disconnected the usb stick and firewire cable.
On reboot I was given the chance to select last good configuration - but I just selected "normal".
The winxp booted successfully!
I plugged in the usb stick - fine.
Connected and switched on firewire - again fine.

I am quite relieved to have winxp back (if only because all my work's there, not because I'm a winxp fan!).

My question (finally) is:
Is this "normal" behaviour? - if so does anyone know why this might be so (knoppix is read only right)?
Should I go ahead and try knoppix again? - I'd like to, but I'm worried...
All help/advice/encouragement greatly appreciated.

Mike

Never user knoppix 5.2 before. But on knoppix 5.1 and all previous version, never have the situation as you mentioned. So to me, it is not normal since the knoppix run on RAM plus your cd only. Should not touch your hard disk at all unless you ask them to do so.

Rgds,
Chip

[wolfton]

...but have you considered that you have a problem with your USB hardware/controller? Was you mouse USB or PS/2? If your mouse was USB, then both of your hardware related issues were USB, probably on different ports. I have had similar issues with my cpmputers in the past, but nothing exactly like what you described. I have used every version of Knoppix since 3.7.

My first instinct was that your problem is in fact hardware related, and that perhaps your mouse, USB Flash Stick, and/or your USB hub/controller is damaged. Had you ever started your computer with that particular USB Flash Stick in that particular port before?

Sometimes Windows doesn't like to start up with alien memory devices. If it were a floppy disk, then you wouldn't have gotten that far. A virus can cause these symptoms, but that wouldn't explain how that left mouse button wouldn't work in Knoppix. Knoppix, or any live OS, cannot be affected by a virus.

If you have solved the problem, it would be nice to see how, exactly, so that others can benefit from the wisdom you have earned in this.