trying to rule out the hard drive as the issue, i burn a newish knoppix disk and try booting to it.. and it works fine without any exclamation marks after getting past the initial bios boot screen.

Well I just recently decided to try and get started with linux. I thought Knoppix would be a good idea since it doesn't alter anything on the HD. Here's the prob:<BR><BR> Whne I boot from my laptop it ...