Quote Originally Posted by utu View Post
Greetings, davidpiney.

A few comments and suggestions for your consideration.

1. dd copy makes an exact copy of things; if you dd a LiveDVD
onto a usb, I think
you may create a read-only device, which won't save things.

2. From your read-only dvd or a read-only usb, you should be able to
use the built-in 'Install to Flash Disk' function to create a working
read-write LiveUSB, preferably using a fresh usb as the target.
Thanks for offering help utu. I should have written more clearly that I used the dd program to overwrite the flashdrive before copying a preinstalled (archived) version of 7.4.2 to the now cleaned flashdrive. I hope that's the right proceedure to get a new flashdrive up and running quickly? It's worked great since I began using knoppix, so I suspect that I picked up a bug somewhere. It puzzles me that I was unable to overwrite the bug with dd though. After doing a zero dd to clean the flashdrive and a dd copy of the archived working copy of knoppix 7.4.2, the flashdrive still fails to boot with the same error. Julian says that NSA achieves their control through controling the bios, and it seems in this case a likely suspect. But I'm way too much newbie to have even a clue about understanding that puzzle. Interesting subject though. At least with Knoppix I've got a chance to keep my machine running. Otherwise it's largely hopeless it seems to me. God bless Knoppix, and good neighbours generally: the working voice of true democracy.