Hi,
You could always try booting from USB memory stick instead as a final 
test. There is a fantastic program to make a memory stick bootable with 
your choice of distro from:
http://lubi.sourceforge.net/unetbootin.html
It will put an ISO (or even download the latest distro for you) on a 
memory stick and sort everything out for you. Just reboot and set your 
BIOS to boot from USB and away you go. Also a lot quicker to boot than 
DVD/CD :)
Don't give up on ubuntu, or linux in general, it's far better than 
"doze" anyday.
Ritchie
Becky Taylor wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> Well I am trying ubuntu for the first time (second really - I tried a 
> live boot CD before, and couldn't bear how orange it was - I am giving 
> it another chance ;-) ).
> I downloaded a ISO image from the official ubuntu website - chrome was 
> playing up a bit with my downloads, so I switched to firefox, and after 
> that it downloaded OK.
> I opened it with an application ubuntu reccomended called infra 
> recorder, and while one message came up (I can't remember what it was, 
> but it was more like information than and error message- nothing that 
> seemed too important), everything seemed to go OK, and it was done in 
> under a minute.
> I placed the CD in my laptop, and chose boot from CD/DVD option, and 
> that came up OK.
> Then I tried to 'Try ubuntu without installing it', and the message that 
> came up was something like 'I/O error - reboot'. I tried again, and the 
> same thing happened, so I then picked option 'check disc for defects', 
> and the same error message came up, as it did with 'install ubuntu'.
>
> I have downloaded Mint from the official Mint site a little while ago, 
> and that also wouldn't load, but a lot of error messages came up whilst 
> I was burning it, so I thought that I had burned it wrong.
>
> Now I am beginning to wonder if it's a problem with my laptop.... I have 
> promised myself I will NEVER get an Advent again.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Becky
>
> PS I didn't know Alan Pope ran the ubuntu podcast! I checked it out 
> today, it's pretty cool! ;-)
>
>