Hey All,

I just finished installing Knoppix to my HDD. I want to say thank you to Klaus, and to all of you that post with excellent information. Knoppix is great, and the info you have shared has gotten me this far. Thanks.

So I decided to post, and relate how I installed Knoppix on my HDD with Windows XP Pro as my main OS until now.

Dell D600 Latitude Laptop (1.6 GHz Centrino)
40 GB HDD
1 GB RAM
ATI Radeon 9000 Mobile, 14.1" SXGA+ screen
Intel PRO/LAN 2100 Wireless 802.11b card

1.) I used Partition Magic 8.1 to partition my drive C:\. I had 40 GB HDD that I took 10 GB off. I made a 8 GB ext3 partition (primary), 750 GB swap file parition (logical), and 1.250GB user directory partition (logical).

I'm a n00b, and so I'm just hoping this was OK.

2.) Rebooted and started Knoppix. Nothing special there.

3.) Opened a term window and typed "sudo knoppix-installer". Really, I followed the instructions here: http://knoppix.net/docs/index.php/HdInstallHowTo. The third paragraph pnly.

4.) An installer window appears. I selected #1, then #2 and started the installation. I also selected that the bootsector be written to the partition I was installing Knoppix to, NOT the mbr.

5.) After installation gets done, in the same term window inputted the following to get the bootsector file: "dd if=/dev/hdx# of=/bootsect.knx bs=512 count=1"
This procedure is located at: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4174, and you substitute "x#" in "/hdax#" for the partition you are using to install Knoppix to. Mine was hda3 (First HHD, third partition).

6.) Then I copied the bootsector file I had just made, so that I could email to myself. My Dell laptop has no floppy! So, I entered: "cp /bootsector.knx bootsector.knx.txt". I then opened up Mozilla Mail, configured it for my POP account (make sure you dont download your email at the end, and in the Account Settings, set the option to leave your mail on the server), and emailed myself the bootsect.knx.txt file. Easy-peasy!

7.) I then reboot to Windows, opened up Outlook Express and saved my knoppix.knx.txt file to C:\. Opening up a Command Prompt window, I entered:

cd \
attrib -h -r -s boot.ini
copy boot.ini boot.old
notepad boot.ini

Then I add "C:\bootsect.knx "Knoppix 3.3"" at the end of the file, and changed the "Timeout=30" to "Timeout=5". Just like the instructions here told me so: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4174. Saved the boot.ini file, and un-did the attrib settings, and renamed the bootsect.knx.txt file:

attrib +h +r +s boot.ini
rename bootsect.knx.txt bootsect.knx

8.) I then rebooted and am enjoying my installation of Knoppix, even as I type this.

Notes: I tried the QTParted program, but for some reason, it crashed on me. So, I just used Partition Magic instead. My next thing is to get my wireless card working, and I believe I need to have a newer kernel (2.4.25 or 2.6.x for ndiswrapper). I'm trying to understand how to get there.

Again, I didn't figure any of this out. My understanding of some things might be skewed, but thank you to all of you for your contributions.

Scott