alright downloaded the opensuse 11.1 kde 4 live cd and I burnt it with cdburnerXP as an .iso image ok so I put it in my disk drive and restart windows ok right at start up I can hear the drive running (and the drive light flashing indicating it's reading the disc) ok my startup pauses for maybe 10 seconds then windows starts up so I googled my problem and was directed to the opensuse forum which one guy suggested "check the md5sum of the .iso file you downloaded and (2) from the CD menu, do the "Media Check", too." alright I can't find a md5sum file anywhere in the iso and how do you do a media check? also I don't know if this would effect it or not but I have several options for burning they are the following
Burn Method
Burn at once.
Session at once (add more files later)
Burn Options
Use Buffer protection
Finalize Disc

Which of these options should be checked? thanks for you help
also don't know if this matters but I burnt it on a dvd-r not a cd-r

With a live CD, you shouldn't restart windows. You should set your bios boot priority to boot from a CD and only boot from the HD if there is no bootable CD in the CD drive. Then you boot directly into your live CD distro without going through windows at all.

You should find the md5sum file as a separate file in the same place you downloaded the iso image from. It wouldn't be on the iso image.
cheers,
jdk

also if you put the cd in the drive and read it ( while windows is running ) there should be A LOT of files on the disk . If there is JUST ONE a *.iso file then you burned it wrong .It needs to be burned as " an image"

i like to use ( on windows )
CDBurnerXP http://cdburnerxp.se/
or
InfraRecorder http://infrarecorder.org/

yes there are several files on the disc I just had to change the order bios booted in...and also just curious what if I shut my computer down with say a movie in the drive would changing the order of the bios cause any problems with this

No, it shouldn't. The bios can distinguish between a bootable disk and one with a movie on it.
cheers,
jdk

As long as the movie isn't Fried Green Tomatoes you should be safe.