OK... The upshot of this is that I get a new box.....

Basically, no matter what I did short of reformatting and reinstalling allowed me to get the thing to boot... Even a fixmbr in the recovery console did nothing.....

So, since I have to start installing all my stuff from scratch and I have been thinking about a faster box, (it's only a 1G chip), I scrounged around in the inventory we have and have now generated a 2.2G AMD/256M DDR/30G/20G/Win2k Box.... fast little bugger compared to the last one...

I have no idea what the Knoppix distro did but as I said the person who gave it to me is trusted insofar as he wouldn't try to mess with my box and probably couldn't manage it if he tried... Which is the second part of the issue... Who knows what that Knoppix distro was supposed to do???? Either way... It caused me some grief.....

All's well really... The box needed redoing, it needed upgrading, (45% of my users have more powerful boxes than mine was).... Also I have a second drive in the box now, (my old one) where I will be doing a nightly system state backup so this won't occur again.....

S'funny.... I can't remember how many times I tell people "Backup, backup, backup"..... LOL... Not that I lost anything.... just time.....