Mint 15 Cinnamon 32 bit DVD issue

[#1]

This is my 4th or 5th go with Linux Mint or Ubuntu, every time I've gone back to WinXP. I had high hopes this time as Mint 15 gets rave reviews in most places. I'd always managed to get the darn thing to install but not this time. My last Ubuntu excursion was really annoying so I dont want to go back there ideally.
I  downloaded the iso and burned it to DVD but when I try and boot it take ages and after 5 mins I start to get a load of errors:
EDD: Error 800 reading sector nnnnnn
I reburned a new image but it generates the same problem.  I can't get past go this time.
Any ideas please, other than sticking with XP a bit a longer?

[#2]

I often have trouble with the optical drive on my laptop so usually have to resort to an external USB one for burning disks but the damned thing will not boot from the external DVD and only sometimes works on the internal one, my solution is to use a USB flash key instead (you'll need to find suiable software to transfer the iso to a usb key though).

[#3]

You could check the md5 of the image to make sure your download is ok. If you are only having issues with the lt have you tried booting it on a desktop pc?
Or if your system will boot from usb try the unetbootin util to make a bootable usb drive.
Or re burn it a a LOW speed 4x.

[#4]

Yep the MD5sumis fine. I'm trying to install on an oldish desktop ( no laptop). The DVD is fine It works on my main desktop so maybe the drive on the old desktop.

[#5]

Maybe the drive needs the optical bit cleaning???????

[#6]

Might or it might prefer the other type of media, if it was +R try a -R (or VV)

[#7]

Cleaned the drive  ... Still a FAIL.
Not sure if its worth buying a stack of DVD+R's but thanks for the advice. I tried to boot from the usb as suggested using the unetbootin prog . in set up there is an option for USB -FDD but it ended up with the firing up XP on on the HDD so I couldn't get that to work either. 
Really cheesed off now. May be its time to recognise the old hardware is passed it.
AMD Athlon XP - 2200+ (1.8 GHz); 1.5GB of RAM. Didn't seem that ancient to me.

[#8]

The old Athlon XP was my first machine I ever installed Linux on, certainly more than capable on older distros, not sure about current ones as mine's gathering dust at the moment.
Just one though might be to try something that comes on a CD rather than DVD install - there' plenty of choice out there. 

[#9]

Not ideal as i really wanted Mint.
Ubuntu's installer is CD sized and the CD has worked flawlessly so at least its a modern os now. Thanks a lot for your help

[#10]

You could have "borrowed" the DVD drive from your other pc until you had it installed.

[#11]

@groundsman: Now that you have Ubuntu running and if you still want to try Mint, you could install "live-fat-stick" and put multiple opensuse/ubuntu/mint/fedora installation ISOs onto a USB stick (which is then bootable and still usable for data storage).

[#12]

That will still not work if he cannot boot from USB.

[#13]

Quote

Really cheesed off now. May be its time to recognise the old hardware is passed it. AMD Athlon XP - 2200+ (1.8 GHz); 1.5GB of RAM. Didn't seem that ancient to me.

That's not the only thing that will cheese you off, I believe that your CPU may also be one that no longer supports Flash as is mine. A lot of the older Athlon processes don't because of Adobes decision to drop support other than security updates for Linux and they built newer versions with SSE2 coding which isn't supported by our CPU's. Check to see if your Flash is working here if not you're talking to the right man, I may finally be some use in here for once  I have saved all the stuff for a solution until flash dies.

[#14]

HB: True, I took the USB boot failure as a unetbootin problem and didn't associate the USB-FDD reference as eliminating other USB devices - IIRC all my Athlon XP based units were fine

[#15]

I have several older Athlon pc's and only one of them would boot from USB.
He could also use the util that is on the live cd from his other pc to try it again. (USB Image Creater)