The problem appeared to be due to a pre-formatted floppy that was formatted using /Q (quickformat). When I formatted the floppy using a normal format and then re-wrote the boot image on the floppy everything worked fine.
Another Linux noob here.
I've been able to boot Knoppix 3.3 from a CD. Now I'm trying to do a "poormans install" as documented here:
http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/HdBasedHowTo
I've followed directions from section 1.4. No problems encountered.
The boot floppy displays the main boot screen. At the boot: prompt I press enter. Vmlinuz loads, then miniroot.gz loads, and after about 5 seconds I receive the error:
Boot failed; please change disks and press a key to continue.
I receive no other error messages.
When I boot directly from the CD I am able to view the KNOPPIX image on my D:\KNOPPIX. For what it's worth my C: drive (formatted as FAT - not FAT32) is sda1 and my D: drive (formatted as FAT32) is sdb5. [My D: drive is the only partition on that particular drive. It is located in an extended partition; there are no primary partitions on this particular drive.]
I'm stumped. Any ideas? I want to run directly from the ISO; I don't want to install Knoppix on this machine.
The problem appeared to be due to a pre-formatted floppy that was formatted using /Q (quickformat). When I formatted the floppy using a normal format and then re-wrote the boot image on the floppy everything worked fine.

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