Thank you for the information badger99. I think two of us have a serious timezone mismatch. utu is too kind. I've never had a messed screen under Knoppix so this is new ground for me too.

The information you've provided tells me you've a modern machine with two DVI outputs for video and two 'wide-screen' monitors of the same make and model. Not quite what I'd imagined from your first post but then you did not say very much.

I think you should be able to fix this with cheat codes. Knoppix is famous for its hardware recognition. IMHO, if your hardware is too new for Knoppix to recognise then mainline Linux distributions have no chance.

The X org video driver (not Linux kernel) you've got loaded the nouveau driver. I believe this is a new, open source, alternative to the proprietary nvidia driver. I suspect nouveau is 'still in development' as they say. It looks like it has problems initialising the graphics acceleration on your graphics card. The garbage you describe sounds like a vertical or horizontal refresh issue.

I'll take your word for it that you've a graphics card in there and a fall back graphics chip on your mother board. To switch between the two I'd guess you'd need to change a BIOS setting but that should not be necessary.

The first thing to try is the proprietary nvidia driver. Try the bootline:

Code:
knoppix xmodule=nv
If that looks good, check the X server log for errors (EE) and warnings (WW) and if it all looks ok then I guess you're home in one.

If that is not satisfactory, try

Code:
knoppix xmodule=vesa
That should work with any card but the resolution will be restricted and the advanced features of your graphics card/chip may not be available (like the acceleration). If this does not work at all, I'll have to scratch my head a bit.

If vesa works and the other two drivers don't, try the cheatcodes no3d, noddc and norandr separately and in combination before reporting back.

Since you have the DVD, you could try desktop=kde just to see if that makes a difference.

It may be we have to try specify the horizontal and vertical refresh rates but that's for next time.

If your priority is rescue, then

Code:
knoppix 2
will boot you to the text console (I think Knoppix uses run levels 2 and 5, not 4 and 5) and you can probably cope from there. I start with:

Code:
cat /proc/partitions
which will gives a summary of disks and partitions. You get a lot more information with:

Code:
fdisk -l
including what 'type' the partition is.