I have put together a basic box,

generic case
40 BG HD
AM2 Motherboard
Using onboard; Video, audio, usb, and ethernet port
Sempron 3200
1 gb ddr2 ram
cdrw drive

I was running Mandriva 2007 on my other PC and tried to put the same hd in this box. No dice. Next, I reinstalled Mandriva and all went well until I booted up only to get a command line. I don't know enough commands yet to over come that issue. I then installed Ubuntu over it. It did fine although it took 19 minutes to boot up (is that normal?)So I got fed up with that.(Plus I just don't like gnome, it just don't feel right.)and tried to install Backtrack2. I can run it fine from the disk, but when booting from the HD I get some fatal error IO blah blah blah. So yet again I tried to use Knoppix 5.1.1 only to realize it is not a real OS. You can't just turn your pc on and run it without the disk and a bunch of command line vodo. You can install it to your hd, but you have to also make a img file on your drive... wtf? So I am beginning to believe that it my problem has to do with either the lack of a videocard or the 64 bit processor. So I am going to try gentoo the amd64 version.

Any clues on what OS to try next? I could just download a bunch of them and keep trying, but I want something that is good.

You have a system that, from your description, is *identical* to one I built as a crash-and-burn development unit. I never had problems with speed of booting, or errors, or any of the grief you mention. I think the secret may be in that one little line you wrote:

"but when booting from the HD I get some fatal error IO blah blah blah."

Makes me think there is something unwell in your hardware. Before I went any further with OS selection and installation, I'd download a test disk http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and run some tests to eliminate the problem.

I've run Debian, Fedora, Knoppix and others on this level, indeed almost a carbon copy of this config with no probs at all

HTH

Jimbo

I have also burned an .iso of gentoo and it gets a crc error. I believe that means that the burn was bad.

YESSS!!!!
I got Mandriva 2007 up and running. All it took was using partion magic to reformat the drive and reinstalling the software. I am pretty excited right now. I had this running on my old pc, but this is a victory in my book. If you are running a Sempron, use either Ubuntu or Mandriva 2007. Those are the ones I have tried and have got to work.