cannot boot from the cdrom
 

My debian lost both top and bottom panel, then I tried to fix them by upgrade the debian from lenny to squeeze, somehow it failed, and the system stuck in grub when it boots. I have no idea how to fix it, so I gave-up and want to reinstall from CD, but now the debian-CD couldn't boot(Note: the cd-rom driver works, it will boot other OS CD), so it seems the problem is from the CD, I tried the CD on other computer, it won't boot either.

What I did wrong:
download the debian (small installation image) from debian.org
and then burn it on a CD-R

Many thanks,

The network installation CD image? That's an ISO and whichever CD burner software you use should recognize that you're burning an ISO image. The image will be bootable once created. Try download again and burning a new CD from the ISO image.

Thank you. yes the network installation DC image, and it's an ISO. I've tried to burn it from a pc desktop (direct download by the PC) and an apple Macpro (download by the apple)both twice, but none works.

what else could be wrong?

1 - When burning the ISO, make sure you burn an image, not data. And burn at the slowest speed.

2 - If I remember correctly, the netinstall ISO is updated regularly. Waiting a few days and downloading the image again may solve the problem.

Thanks Randicus. It works now when I used an ISO writer. Many thanks,