problems booting from a DVD

I'm trying to boot from a CD so I can fix this problem I'm having in another thread. I think I'm supposed to make a new one for this so I apologize if I'm going about this wrong.

So here's the problem. I've got a laptop, it didn't come with an XP CD on its own, but a i386 folder. I followed the instructions here

http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetupdisk.shtml

to make the DVD. I've done this successfully once because I installed Windows XP on a virtual machine once.

But for whatever reason, I cannot boot from this DVD. I go into my BIOS and change the boot order. I should mention, the original CD\DVD drive in the laptop died so I have to use an external USB DVD drive now. I set "USB Storage Device" at the top of the boot priority (and put the CD\DVD Drive right after it just in case thats what it considers my external DVD drive to be), save the settings and then restart. But it just boots normally from my hard drive. It doesn't ask me if I want to boot from the DVD and it also doesn't mention anything about the DVD failing or being the wrong disk or anything. It just boots up normally.

So I'm not sure what to do or what's going on. I'm not sure if the DVD I made is the problem, or I'm doing something wrong procedurally or something and I'm hoping you guys can help.

 

Perhaps your computer can not boot from an external optical drive. Have you ever booted from the external CD/DVD drive?

The USB Storage device indicates your laptop may be able to boot from a USB stick. I know my netbook can do this.

You might have to create a bootable USB stick and put the i386 info on that. I have never made a Windows bootable USB stick. I've only made more than 1/2 dozen linux ones so I can't tell you how to go about doing that.