Hello. I have like no knowledge of Linux at all. Just send me to the corner and laugh at me already. Anyways, I made a distro on NimbleX and I got a CD and successfully loaded my OS on it. Afterwards, I went to the BIOS setup, and chose CD/DVD boot or whatever in the menu. After that, there were many different versions of boot thingys to choose from. I tried ALL of them, and EVERY time I got this message on this link:

http://s842.photobucket.com/albums/z...121_161146.jpg (kernel panic)

Please help me. I have a cheapy Compaq Presario CQ56. I just want to run my fancy Linux OS. Thanks!

Try using a CDROM disk cleaner on that cheapo compaq. They are cheap and look like

http://www.amazon.com/Memorex-CD-DVD.../dp/B00008EM7U

The cd drive lens may be dirty. Did you md5sum NimbleX downloaded Iso before burning CD?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM

Those 2 above things I mentioned can cause a kernel panic in my experience. I ran NimbleX a couple of years back, It is a nice Distro.

Thanks! I did spill some stuff on my cdrom slot. But, all my discs worked fine, so the fact that this one doesn't is odd. I will definitely purchase the cleaner and look at md5sum. Thanks!

Well, I haven't booted up my system yet, so I can't add-on any Linux stuff.

Reading from a disk and booting from a iso on a cd are miles apart. A lot more goes on booting the kernel in a iso image. I have had what looks like a good cdrom read cdrw ok but not boot cdrw. Especially on older laptops like my IBM a22m.

If it's taking a kernel panic, it's already been (successfully) read - at least to some degree. What does the following mean ?Did you do a custom build ?. If so, try downloading their (non-custom) iso and see if it boots.
I might be inclined to try "noacpi" as a boot option - hopefully the liveCD has an option to add/modify boot options.