My Knoppix won't load, what did I do wrong?

I downloaded the Knoppix 5.1.1 CD ISO file(s) and burned it to a CD. I set my puter to boot off the CD/DVD before my HDD. Rebooted my 'puter and it went paused on my CD/DVD drive reading my disk before starting Windows.

What did I do wrong? Should I download the DVD ISO and use that? Need a clue. Thanks.

When you Burnt the CD did you tell the Software to make it a "Bootable" CD?

Try again and make sure you use that option.

Sorry for asking such a question, but I don't know how handy you are with computers.
When you say you burned, did you use the "burn image" option or did you just burn it as any data file on the disc?
Also: what program do you use for burning?

For a quick check, see if you have multiple files in folders. If you do and it's not booting, the image was probably corrupted. If you have a single .iso file, the file was burned incorrectly instead of as an image file.

You want to burn a CD image. You don't want your burning software to make a bootable CD. That's a different operation.

If the CD image is constructed to be bootable, then it will be bootable. The burner program doesn't know, it just burns the image.

Is your bios set up to boot from CD/DVD first? I have one PC that each power up it resets to HDD-CD-floppy in that order despite my telling it to reverse HDD and CD boot order. Didn't matter how many times I saved the change.

[highlight] QUOTE=Pellidon Is your bios set up to boot from CD/DVD first? I have one PC that each power up it resets to HDD-CD-floppy in that order despite my telling it to reverse HDD and CD boot order. Didn't matter how many times I saved the change.[/highlight]

I'll let you in on the world's best kept secret. There is a key you can press during POST that causes the BIOS to put up a boot device selection menu. You can select the device and it will load the OS immediately. You don't have to change the BIOS. The BIOS doesn't have to guess what you want it to do. You don't have to guess what the BIOS is guessing you want it to do. You don't have to remove floppies from their drives or CDs from their drives, etc.

To put it simply, it's too quick and easy for the masses, so don't let it out.

There is one trick to it though. You have to figure out which key, and figure out how and when to press it. On my newer Asus mobo, it's the F8 key. On my Intel mobo, it's the F10 key. My older Asus used the ESC key. I don't remember what the old Dell machines at work used. It's so confusing that I put labels on my keyboard.


This is the Asus menu:



This is the Intel menu. Notice it only shows one hard drive, even though I have two. This is the lamest excuse for a motherboard/BIOS I've ever seen.

Make the disk bootable? DOOOOH!!!

Yes, I had checked my BIOS to ensure it boots from the CD/DVD first. The program I first used was the Sonic (something or other) LE program that came with my Dell laptop. I used the copy data disk on the Knoppix ISO file (only one file). There was no check box to make this disk bootable. I also tried to burn it as an image file too and it did not work.

Out of frustration, I cracked open my new Nero 7 Ultra and it installed a half dozen programs I know nothing about. Proceeded to use the "copy data", "image" and "back-up" functions and coaster-ed another 4 CD's. The product descriptions state that you can make a back up disk bootable, but I never found the check box or radio button to achieve this. Back-up allows for compression but I don't think it would be readble upon boot-up, so I selected no compression and it looked to back up the ISO file onto 2 CD's.

So, if anyone is familiar with the Sonic program or the Nero 7 Ultra, can you give me click by click directions? Thanks much for all your help and advice so far.

I have Nero 6, but the procedure should be the same.
Open up the main application, select recorder -> burn image, select the image file, make sure the "use burn-proof" or somesuch option is active, and let it burn.
Oh, an important thing: bootable Linux CDs must be closed. If you leave it open, it won't boot.
A suggestion: use a CD-RW disc for your next attempts until you nail the correct sequence, so you avoid coastering other discs.

An easy way to burn an image is with CDspeed. Click the create disc tab, then check "burn image". It's a free small program and as a bonus it will check the burn quality.

If you have Nero, you already have CDspeed.

mrsinbad,

did you compare the checksum after downloading? along with the iso image on the download site, there should be a file that contains the md5 checksum. download one of the free md5 checksum comparison programs, run it against the iso file image on your hard drive, and compare the value it generates against the value contained in the checksum file mentioned above. if they are different, download the iso file again, or better yet, try it from different repository.