A few more clues.
Yes, the USB chip worked fine up until last weekend. It failed to work correctly after I issued a shut down command, and for no apparent reason, instead of shutting down, it restarted itself. Was not paying that much attention and pulled the chip out during the reboot process. Has not had window controls since then. Thinking that a file may have either been corupted or possibly erased.
knoppix-data.img was backed up after this since it does look like I will be reloading the chip from the DVD to fix the issue. Still hoping for a solution from here first.
Just wondering, if a blank chip is created, and the knoppix-data.img just be copied to it and work, or does knoppix have to create it and update it;s scripts to know it is there?