Occasionally we discover something incredible that we must share with others.
A recent crash of a Microsoft Windows XP notebook lead us to the discovery of the Knoppix
Linux distribution.  A notebook computer developed a problem with the OS that could not be corrected.  
Even a reinstall of using the original XP CD would not correct the problem.  To our dismay
we discovered that Microsoft supplies no utilities on the XP CD to allow you to get to
the data on your hard drive.  XP must be installed on the hard drive.  We couldn't get this
to happen without first formatting the drive - which of course would have wiped out all 
the data.



What the Knoppix CD Does:

• Boot and run entirely from the CD
• Figure out what hardware is available and load drivers
• Brings up networking and obtains an IP address from your router if available
• Allows you to surf the internet with Firefox web browser 
• Allows you to see your Windows formated hard drives (in read only mode)
• Has a program that will let you access other windows computers on your local network
• Will let you copy data from your local hard drive to another computer on you network
• Has full complement of Unix/Linux tools for connectivety to other *nix systems
• Has games you can play
• Has open office desktop - for word processing/spreadsheets, etc.
• Has email client

You can use Knoppix to:

• Safely get access to the data on the hard drive on your computer without booting windows.
• Allow someone to use your computer to access the internet without worrying that something bad will happen to your system - like a virus or spyware infection
• Learn about and Evaluate Linux
• Play Games

Limitations and Considerations:

• Knoppix runs entirely from the CD and puts your hard drives in read only mode.  This means that there is not convenient easy place to store data.  Unless you have an external drive or make some storage available by using the Knoppix "cheat codes" or mounting a volume read/write you won't be able to save work. 
• From a practicle point of view knoppix needs at least a 128MB memory and a 700mhz processor. 
• Knoppix is not designed to be installed to the hard drive.  If you want to run linux more fully get Red Hat or Novell/Suse.

Knoppix Resources

Knoppix.org is the official site, by the author of Knoppix, Klaus Knopper.

Knoppix.net includes user forums, Wikis, how-tos, and links to the dozens of projects inspired by Knoppix -- such as making your own customized Live Linux CD, running Knoppix on a hard drive, creative uses of USB pen drives, tiny Linuxes, and more.

Article at IBM developer works on using Knoppix for System Recovery

Knoppix gives bootable, one disk Linux - article at IBM developer works