hey i'm extremely new at this, it is my first time trying to fix my own computer and i've been having a lot of trouble. my computer hasn't been able to start due to a SYSTEM32 error. I have things i really dont want to lose on the hard drive so i downloaded knoppix6. the program seemed fine for the first 15mins. there was a screen with multicolored text that said not to remove anything until shutdown so i just left it alone...after those 15 mins it just went to a completely black screen...i left it alone for more than ten hours until i deciced to finally take the cd out and the flashdrive...i checked the flashdrive and there was nothing on it...can someone tell me what i'm doing wrong...or what i need to do! THANK YOU in advance!

That sounds like a memory problem. I recommend checking it with memtest. Use it from your knoppix cd with the cheatcode from here or get a standalone memtest cd.

I'm missing what it was that you had on the flash drive.... I assume from your description that you booted OK from the CD. Please describe what happened in detail

well i put the knoppix6 CD in and it brought up the knoppix menu that said "starting in live-mode" "dont remove medium until shutdown" and it stayed on that window until it went to a blackscreen. the screen stayed that way until i finally decided to take the cd out several hours later.
i was never taken to any other type of menu where i could transfer files from my hard drive to flashdrive so my flashdrive obviously remanied blank

It did not boot...

You haven't had much luck, but there is no harm done, just a failure on the part of the live-cd to load and boot. What is the system hardware that you have?

Can you try again and run the check function that is on the boot menu below "live-mode" to see if your KNOPPIX is a good copy, then run the memtest option from the same menu to see if the RAM shows a fault.

The live-cd PCLinuxOS has a very intuitive GUI to find and copy files if KNOPPIX confuses you. However, KNOPPIX has many cheatcodes as a possible aid in booting, that is if there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the CD quality or the memory. You can start with the "no..." options.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/knoppix-cheatcodes/

I kind of hate to even say this but the current knoppix is not the king of live cd's anymore. It seems to be quite lacking.

Might consider one of the live cd's offered by the almost any of the top 20 distro's listed at distrowatch.com. Fedora, Mint 8, Opensuse should all work fine. Gentoo live is a dvd and kind of big but is pretty nice.

Might also consider using a ultimate boot cd for tests along with power supply tests.

If you have access to a MS system you can also make a live XP or live Vista disk that also works well. See Barts PE or UBCD4WIN or VistaPE.