Question regarding Dell Dimension 4600

Basically, I am trying to sell this computer. I have a burned copy of Windows XP, and wanted to install the new copy on the system so that it would erase everything and start over fresh.

The problems I am having is that the CD will not boot up during start up, and whenever I try to open up the disc from My Computer, I get this message:

"Windows cannot read from this disk. The disk might be corrupted, or it could be
using a format that is not compatible with Windows."

Oh and this is the second disc I have tried using, same problems from both discs.

Does anyone know what else I could do?

If you have another computer you could test the disc in that. If the disc works, try swapping the optical drive into the Dell so that you can get Windows installed, then swap it back when you're finished.

I just tried playing a DVD on the drive, and it worked fine. So i'm not sure what the problem is.

How did you burn the disc? I assume you had a .iso and burned the image to disc?

How did you burn the disc? I assume you had a .iso and burned the image to disc?

I actually burned the disc from an .iso on my MacBook Pro, and I think the Mac formatting of the disc has made it unreadable on this old Dell. I'm going to try and burn the .iso on the windows computer, instead of the Mac and see how that works.

Ya might be a good idea to try that

Are you choosing the disk as the boot device in the bios. When you turn on your computer and it shows the dell logo, it should say hit [key] to edit settings somewhere, I believe it's F12 on dells. Hit that key and look around and you should find a list of devices that your able to boot from. First should probably be your hard drive, then if the disk isn't messed up it should list it there.

So the problem was the fact that I didn't originally burn windows xp on the Dell. I guess the formatting from the Mac messed it up.

Thanks for the response