I don't know what exe file you have that you think is only 284k, but Knoppix is not an exe file, and is much larger. Also, it would be interesting to know what you plan to do once you get Knoppix made and booting. If you plan on removing the files that you hope to recover, either by transferring them to another computer on a network, or writing them to an external media like a flash drive, a CD or DVD, or a FAT formatted external drive (and not an NTFS formatted drive), then good. But if you plan on somehow fixing your Windows system by writing that 284k exe file onto the NTFS partition with Knoppix, you should be warned that that may only make a bad situation much worse.