System will not boot from CD, real frustrating

[QuiteSufficient]

I have a pretty standard amd 64 system that I am running XP on. Both of my cd drives went out in the last year so I got a new Liteon DVD/CDR combo drive from a local store today. I am trying to install another OS I have to a blank IDE hard drive. I understand how to do all this its just that for some reason the system will not boot from the bootable disc. I have set and checked the BIOS to boot from CDROM first, and I made sure the other bad cdroms with no discs in them were unplugged obviously. The DVD I burned is in the drive, I turn the system on, it gets to the point after the BIOS menu "Boot from CD" then immediately proceeds with loading Windows.

This disc works in my brother's computer and a friend's (they both boot from it). I don't have a floppy drive, so what are my other options? Is there a tool that comes with Ultimate Boot Cd or something similar that will allow me to dos browse to the directory?

 

[CefiroZ]

Have you tried disconnecting the remaining hard drive and then trying to boot? It won't help with the problem, but it may at least force an error message to be displayed to give you a little more info.

When the screen says "Boot from CD" or whatever, does your CD spin up and/or drive light come on?

Have you simply tried a different CD brand? Every once in a while a drive doesn't like a particular brand of CD.

Can I assume this mystery OS is linux? If so, have you tried a different disto from the one that is on this nonbooting CD?

 

[category_five]

press the "any" key

 

[alphanumeric]

Is your optical drive connected to your primary IDE channel? If not try it there. My Gigabyte board will not boot from my DVD drive unless it is connected to the primary channel.