HP Laptop not booting from a CD

A friend of mine just got a used laptop and gave it to me to re-install a fresh copy of windows.

I set the bios to boot from the CD-Rom first, then floppy, HDD and then network.

When it starts up It doesn’t do anything with the drive… just goes right into XP (home). Anyone ever have a problem like this? Know how you corrected it off hand? It did save the boot order in the bios ok, so that isn’t a problem.

Also, the thing would stay on for approx 30 mins, then shut it self off even on AC power. I figured it was heat related and blew all the dust/dog hair I could out of it with a can of compressed air… any suggestions for the if it does it again? (it’s been on now for about 15mins and no problems yet)

does the cd rom work at all? Is the cd bootable?

ya know, I’m an idiot. looks like the drive is shot… could of sworn I put a cd in, while in windows and it worked. turns out it’s not reading anything

thanks man