hello,

i've successfully been able to burn an ISO image of Ubuntu on a cd-rw, (which is quite an accomplishment for me ) but when i put it in my computer and restart my computer (windows XP) my computer does not load the drive. i can hear the cd-drive working, and maybe considering booting up from the disk, but it doesn't. i know that i need to change the boot sequence or something like that so that my computer will recognize my CD drives prior to fully loading XP, but i don't know how. could anyone please give me fool-proof direction on how to do this? i'm not totally past the n00b levels of computing yet so simple and explicit directions would be best =D

i'm getting my dad to help me with this, but he's convinced that i am going to ruin the computer just by touching it so i have to make sure that i don't mess up, or he'll never shut up about it >.< he's certain that i'm going to end up overwriting windows XP or blowing up the computer or something like that, and now i'm paranoid that i'll end up doing just that. thanks, dad >.<

Ok, firstly, lets make sure you burned the ISO right. Go to Cheetahburner.com and download a 15 day trial of the Cheetah Burn CD Burner (so damn easy to use). After you get it installed, pop in the CD, hit start, then burn ISO file, then select the ISO file to burn, and start the burn.
Next, we have to make sure the computer knows to boot from the CD drive. Reboot your computer, and when the splash screen appears (the screen that shows a name, usually of the PC manufacturer) and hit F2. If that doesn't work, then try delete or tab (all motherboards and BIOS chips are different so it might not be any of these keys, but it usually tells you what key to press on the splash screen). This will bring you into the BIOS setup, where you can then tell the computer to boot from the CD drive. Again, as all BIOS chips are different, and my PC was already setup to boot from CD-ROM, you should go here to figure out how to set the BIOS.

Forgot to subscribe to post, whoops.

thanks so much! i had burned the iso correctly, and i had to press F2 to get into my bios and change the boot sequence. we (my dad & i) ended up getting it to work (yay!) and i liked ubuntu well enough, although the size of everything was a little too big for my taste but im sure that can be altered somewhere in preferences. the only trouble we had was figuring out how to restart the computer/get out of ubuntu without the computer looking at the CD drive again and getting back into ubuntu. but the cd was ejected (whether it was programmed to or whether we ended up pressing the right buttons, i dont know ) but we did end up doing a hard reboot, because after it was ejected we just had a blank screen with a flashing gray line in the upper left hand corner. (does that have something to do with waiting for a command or something?) anyway, thanks so much for your help now that im more comfortable with changing the boot sequence and with a live cd, hopefully i'l try some more flavors out.

To reboot look in the start menu, or logoff, depending on the distribution of Linux you're using. It should go through a command prompt, or just a loading screen, then it will prompt you to remove the CD, and then press enter. It is programmed to automatically open the drive. Glad I could help.