Quote Originally Posted by acuevas
.....and I and up with a blank screen and a 'cross' as a cursor but nothing else. After a while it simply shuts down. I'm guessing I burmed a bad image?
I'm not clear what the problem is from your data. Or even just what you mean by "a bad image". That you have a Cross cursor indicates that you got pretty far into the booting process, far enough to start the X graphical environment. I'm not sure why it will not boot the rest of the way from there (most failures in making a disc reveal themselves a lot before that).

Here are some additional thoughts that might help:
  • BitTorrent does it's own error checking so the md5 test usually isn't really needed with a BitTorrent download (but it is extremely important on a download from the mirrors). Still, I hope that you did the md5 test and got a match, or that you do it now and confirm that the ISO file is good.

    That fact that you go as far as you did into the boot process confirms that you did indeed burn the ISO "as an image" rather than just write it directly to a disc or make one of the other common mistakes. Did you burn it at low speed? This is very important. Even if you burned at low speed, you might want to try another burn, I would suggest burning to a 700 meg CDRW. This will avoid any waste if the results are the same, and will further enforce that the burn is done at a low speed.

    By the way, the mention of 700 meg reminds me, you did use 700 meg media, didn't you. It's all pretty much 700 meg now, but we have troubleshot boot problems that turned out to be someone trying to burn to 650 meg media.

    And, if you used Nero, did you click the option to have it do a verification pass at the end of the burn. On occasion I have had this catch a bad burn even though my ISO was good and I was burning at low speed.

    If none of that helps, you may want to try three things at boot time. One is to type in failsafe at the boot prompt and boot into failsafe mode. I can assure you that you will not like running in failsafe mode, as many things including you mouse may not work, but it may at least confirm that the system will boot up further into Knoppix. If it does then you may need to play with the cheat codes and find a code or combination of codes that work for you.

    The second thing is to type memtest at the boot prompt and run memtest86. Let it run at least a full pass. I don't really think that you have a memory problem, but this has indeed found the problem for some people and you are all set to do the test so you might as well determine if there is a memory issue now rather than weeks from now.

    Try typing testcd at the prompt and let Knoppix test the CD itself. I don't put blind faith in a test that passes (it can't quite check everything), but it is worth doing and any failure of testcd would certainly point you in the direction of a problem.

    If you do try to burn another disc and you don't have a 700 meg CDRW available, then try another brand. Note that I didn't say anything about using a "quality brand", as some of my worst burning experiences have been on expensive Sony media and I have plenty of bargain brand or generic no-name media that is great.

In all I think you are likely doing things right and that you may just need to find a good set of cheat codes for your hardware, but I mentioned the rest because they are things that we have seen time and time again. Please post back your results and any additional questions that you might have.