LiveCD filesystem failure
 

I'm a linux Newb, but I've been running Ubuntu on my laptop for about 3 months now, so I know a little. On my not-laptop computer I've been trying to run a livecd, because I need windows for my video games, but for novelty and some easy every day tasks linux just does it better.
The system has the following specs:

P5WD2 mobo (800 MHz FSB, LGA775, dual PCI-E etc.)
Pentium 4 640 (Prescott core)
MSI GeForce 7800 GT (just one, 400 MHz)
2x512MB Kingston Corsai ValueSelect RAM (PC2 4200, unbuffered, dual channel, tested and free of errors)
various USB devices (including a 160 gig external HDD, mouse and keyboard)
2xInternal HDDs (UDMA)
DVD-Rom (internal, IDE)
DVD-+RW (internal, IDE)
A PCI USB 2.0 card
and a PCI Wifi card

That's just about as exhaustive a list as I can make.
Anyway, I've been trying to use a livecd, so I downloaded KNOPPIX, and when that didn't work I tried KANOTIX, both of which had almost identical error messages:


Can't find KANOTIX filesystem, sorry.
Dropping you to a (very limited) shell.
Press reset button to quit.

I googled the error and came up with 3 general solutions: it's an error in the disk image (check yer checksums), it's an error with the DMA driver or whatever (nodma cheatcode), or it's an error with your USB drivers (bootusb2 cheatcode). I can tell you right now that none of those three suggestions has solved my issue.
Does anyone else have any other ideas? Given that it happened with both OSs, I'm inclined to believe that the problem is hardware related, but I'm not willing to say for sure.
Thank you.

Ok, so I just tried using the Ubuntu livecd, and I had a different problem, I'm not sure if it's related, but it sorta makes sense.
It said that it couldn't automatically detect my CD drive and that I'd have to install custom drivers from a floppy. I tried with both of my CD drives, one of which is the most plain vanilla generic DVD-ROM you can imagine. They're both IDE. I'm guessing maybe my IDE controller is a little out of the kernel's realm of understanding. Does that seem to make any sense to anyone? How might I deal with that?

http://kerneltrap.org/node/5392
About halfway down that page someone named "nash" looks like he or she has something interesting to say, unfortunately because I'm all newbified I haven't a clue what it means. Can anyone give me some help deciphering that madness?
Thank you.

*bump*

Have you done the flash update ???. About your only hope I'd think.
If FC4 (for Kayvan) went on you should be able to boot the CD.