Using Fedora Core 4 currently.

Thinking of upgrading to Fedora Core 8. I burned the DVD and tried to boot FC8 on my laptop.

It failed. Tested the cd and it works in other pcs. Tested the cd rom by inserting FC4 DVD and it boots.

But when a "FC8 boot DVD" is booted up, it doesn't detect.
It loads seamlessly to FC4 instead.

I tried everything short of formating it to zeros.

Any suggestions on this?

You need to set the laptop to boot from the dvd drive.

Sorry, I forgot to mentioned that i could boot up with a FC4 DVD.

So i already tried that.

its just that i couldn't boot up with FC 8 DVD why is that?

Either burn another DVD or swap one of the drives over.
Not all DVD drives are created equal.

You stated that you tried a DVD in a cd-rom drive. Did you mean to say DVD-ROM drive? If all you have is a CD-ROM drive, you will not be able to read the DVD.

Well, if it is a DVD-ROM/DVD-RW, then I would like to mention that even I had a similar problem. But the situation was different here: my friend was trying to install F8 on his Laptop using a USB DVD-RW device. He had a DVD-ROM on his Laptop, but it was not working. So, we used an external device. Now, the boot priority was set and the F8 showed the boot screen. I press enter to boot. Just before anaconda loads, the DVD tray on the Laptop comes out and the F8 DVD in the external device says: there is no medium in the DVD-ROM (Laptop one). I guess this is a problem with the F8 DVD. It tries to look for the DVD device on the Laptop. We failed to install from the external device. We had tried setting the Master etc. Even then, it failed. Of course, we did not remove the DVD drive on the Laptop!

Ok let me rephrase.

FC4 DVD vs LaptopDVDreader = OK
Tested it in my laptop DVD rom drive/reader.
LaptopDVDreader boots FC4 DVD. So tested OK.

FC8 DVD vs DesktopDVDreader = OK
Tested it in a desktop DVD rom drive/reader.
DesktopDVDreader boots up with FC8 DVD. So tested OK.

FC8 DVD vs LaptopDVDreader NOT = OK
Tested FC8 DVD in a my pre-installed FC4 linux platform. (My laptop's HDD contains Fedora Core 4)
LaptopDVDreader unable to boot up with the FC8 DVD. So NOT ok.

So I'm thinking, is it possible that FC4 is interfering with FC8's boot up installation. I'm thinking of formatting the harddisk. Just to see if it works.

Any other suggestions in the meantime?

It is unlikely that the existing install would affect the boot-from-optical ... unless... BIOS is being ignored (a la EFI).

So far, all you've shown is that a DVD that boots in one system doesn't boot in another. Reburn the DVD at a slower speed, and try that. OR extract the iso to the laptop HDD, and install from there.

FC4 DVD boots does not mean that the f8 DVD will (same HW, different DVDs).
f8 boots on desktop does not mean it will boot on laptop (diff HW same DVD - too many points of difference). Some drives/controllers are more tolerant of small flaws in a DVD surface than others.

Of course - could be something else... not enough info.