I have installed Debian Linux many times. I have found that using a 2.25" diskette with Smart Boot Manager will convince almost any PC that it should boot from the CD drive.
I was given a Compaq Presario 1245 as a gift. It is able to find a Windows98 installation CD in the drive, and it can boot from it. It fails to boot from any of my usual Linux-Distro-XYZ CDs.
I get the funny feeling that it only wants to use Microsoft products to boot from.
What does Compaq do strangely that I don't know about? I want to install Linux on my laptop.
Suggestions anyone?

sometimes especially on those old machines you have issues booting burned cd's I would try and burn the distro again at 1x so as to minimize errors that new cdroms can compensate for. Optionally you could get a commercial disk from like ubuntu.com for free or other distros for a nominal fee , there is always the option to boot of PXE or floppy.

Regards,
JKZfixme

It seems to have been exactly the problem of having used a CD which was burned in a manner other than the machine wanted to swallow.

Thanks for the help.

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