Hello all, first time poster.

Okay so my problems all started yesterday when I made the decision that I'd dual boot Windows XP and Fedora on my single hard drive. Having limited experience working with partitions and even less experience working with Linux, I did a bit of googling until I felt safe. So I made the decision that I'd clean up my hard drive a bit before I booted up on the Fedora installation discs. Anyways, without thinking, I deleted the boot.ini file in C:\, figuring it belonged the the setup file that was also in C:\. So after I finished removing all the programs I needed to, and deleting temporary files, I rebooted my computer. That's when I came to the realization that I deleted a file necessary for Windows XP to boot. Anyways, I put it to the back of my mind and decided I'd fix it when I got Fedora installed. Unfortunately, the Fedora installer had trouble resizing my Windows XP partition, so I couldn't get Fedora installed.

Now, I used Knoppix a couple of years back, when my Windows wasn't working and I needed to access my files. After googling(as always), I found out that I could edit partitions safely using Knoppix. I reburned Knoppix a few times, because I kept receiving the "Can't find Knoppix filesystem. Dropping into shell(etc)" error when it tried to access the CD. Finally, I got my hands on a spotless disc and downloaded Knoppix 5.1.1 iso CD. I burned it at 4x, just to be safe. When I attempted to boot off the CD, I used

knoppix nodma

It returned the same "Can't find Knoppix filesystem. Dropping into shell" error. Frustrated, I restarted the computer and just let it automatically boot after the timer. I was shocked when it succeeded and got all the way to the point where it's initializing the "X" graphic environment. Then the monitor turned off.

So I googled again, and found that I might need to set the screen up correctly. And so I tried..

knoppix screen=800x600

I'm sure you realize how frustrated I was when once again, I received the "Can't find Knoppix filesystem." error.

Any clues on what I can do to make this work?

Edit: And I realize my little rant was lengthy. Bear with me. :P

EDIT2: Attention! I managed to get it to work using:
knoppix xscreen=800x600 xvrefresh=60 maxhsync=54 vga=normal

Although it does seem to freeze a lot more than I remember

(Believe it or not, another) EDIT: It seems to freeze after about 5 mins. It freezes when I highlight a submenu in the K tab. Anyways, each time it froze, I just rebooted, until suddenly, this pops up:

Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block(1,3)