I'm trying to run Knoppix or MEPIS from a Live CD. Whenever I run it, it works fine up until the loading screens (for both) after loading nothing happens. The screen turns blank. I've tried waiting for a while but nothing. I am putting the cd in, going to bios and then from there booting from a disk, but i did not change my boot settings permanently. I used Alcohol 120 Image Burning Wizard to burn the CDs. I would be more descriptive but i have to go now.

Quick Comp Stats:

2 gig ram
2.8 gig pentium d
dvd ,dvd + rw drives
nvidia geforce 7300

Thank Your For your help it is much appreciated.

My first guess is that you don't have your display set up correctly, but you did not provide much information. Have you tried any boot cheatcodes to set your display correctly?

haven't tried the display thing. But here's what happens in more detail. Boot up comp. F12 --> BIOS. Boot from USB or optical drive. Then get the loading screen, load everything fine, then nothing. Screen turns black. That's what happens in detail. I'll try the display cheat codes and see what happens.

Do you mean you get all the text on screen loading modules etc.? What's the last thing it says before going blank? Strange it happens with both distros - knoppix excellent h/w detection but as mentioned could be display error.

got MEPIS running, but not knoppix. with MEPIS i simply changed the boot option to the second one VESA or something. For Knoppix i got all the text and then blank.

Try cheat codes to set video options h/w detection with knoppix - http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Cheat_Codes

i've verified it to be a display problem, just not sure which cheats to use (?)

found some tips & tricks will try them

Something like knoppix xmodule=vesa or knoppix xmodule=nv should work

yeah that's it! that's what i used for MEPIS. Which i'm using right now.

Great, glad it worked

alright! love Knoppix. going to install to my comp. awesome xp alternative. runs more smoothly.

You can certainly do that although it's not really intended for that - this may help making it as smooth as possible http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Category...e_Installation . My own experience was that things eventually broke and I spent too much time fixing it. Tried kanotix instead but you may have better luck

Im glad you like Linux. I might recommend, however, that if you are installing it you should pick an installation rather than a live distro. Knoppix will run great off the CD but you will face some problems if you try to install it simply because it is optimized to be run from a CD. It will work, but you would probably be better off with a mainstream install. You could look into Fedora Core, Gentoo, Ubuntu, or a similar distro.