Trouble booting thinkpad from CD ROM

This is kind of a dumb quesiton, but I can't seem to figure it out. I'm trying to install Linux on my thinkpad from a CD, but I can't seem to get it to boot from the CD for some reason. I tried holding down C and ctrl C, and I went into the BIOS and switched the primary boot to the CD ROM, but without fail windows XP comes up and it won't boot from the CD. Any Ideas? Thanks.

If could be that that CD is not a self bootable one. Is it an install CD or a Live CD? Have you also tried a different computer to see if it started up on that one?

I'm not sure about the difference between and install and live CD. It is a .iso that I downloaded from the linux suise site. I don't have any other systems easily available that I can test it with.

Oh ok. Well did you extract the iso before you burnt the CD? or did you just burned the iso file on it? The boot up files are within the iso.

I knew it was something stupid like that. I just burned the iso to the cd. Thanks for your help. This is why I'm going to school.

No problem. Many of us have learned from trial & error, and believe me there's gonna whole lot of errors. Any one who claims they never errored is just plain lying.