i have BT3F on a Lexar JD Firefly 4Gb thumbdrive. my laptop has not been able to boot into anything persistent, in fact, all but one of the boot options don't work

 the only option i can get to boot is "BT3 Graphics mode (VESA KDE)" which boots without needing to login and startx. it goes from GRUB (or is it Lilo?) to the desktop

Run BT3 no Hard Disk and BT3 Graphics mode, Copy To RAM encountered a fatal error, it was just a command-line spewing out info, then this:
Code:
* Something went wrong and we can't continue. This should never happen.
* Please reboot your computer Ctrl+Alt+Delete ...
(The copy to RAM said something about running out of memory, even though i have a gig, but the last two lines were the same as above)

Run BT3 Safe Mode got a kernel panic (blinking caps lock light means that it's a KP right?) the last two lines of the booting text are:
Code:
linux live end, starting the Linux distribution
Usage: inti 0123456SsQqAaBbCcUu
how can i get some other options to work? i don't know where to begin with this, but ultimately, i'd like my wireless to work on boot, and have everything up-to-date. from what i understand so far i'd need to insert the modules, but would that last within a Live environment?

.:EDIT:. by the way, my signature is the laptop in question.