Hey! Just got it to work with no CD! (Posting from it now.) The drawback is that the loopback file (the big /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX file on the CD) has to be on another partition.

So, here's how it looks:

The Knoppix ISO ("KNOPPIX.iso"), the kernel ("linux26"), and "minirt26" are saved in C:\KNOPPIX. The loopback file is saved on the 2nd partition (it's got Kanotix on it, formatted as ext2) as /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX.

The GRUB stanza that loads it:
Code:
# For booting Knoppix off the hard disk
title Boot Knoppix 3.4 from hard disk
kernel (hd0,0)/KNOPPIX/linux26 fromhd=/dev/hda2 bootfrom=/dev/hda1/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX.iso lang=us keyboard=us alsa
initrd (hd0,0)/KNOPPIX/minirt26.gz
Trying to have the loopback file and the ISO on the same partition isn't working...

Anyway, if you had a 1GB thumbdrive to put the loopback file on, and put the ISO on your NTFS partition, looks like you could boot that way. ("Poor man's install"? How much does a 1GB thumbdrive cost? )

<edit>
Further experimentation reveals that if you've got a 2nd ext2 partition, and the loopback file saved as /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX on it, you don't have to have the ISO on the NTFS partition at all -- you can just boot it using the "fromhd=/dev/hda2" code and omit the "bootfrom=" code.

But then you can't restore your saved configs from hda2, since you've booted from the loopback file on hda2. (I still maintain that saved configs, persistent home dirs, and whatnot all have to be loaded from separate partitions.)

In other words, still looking for a way to boot Knoppix from just one NTFS partition without having to have the Knoppix CD in the drive.

Now if you had a big enough thumb drive...
</edit>