installation

[mike kenward]

Dear all,
realise im probably addressing you all in a completely inappropriate manner, 
but im not a frequent user of forumsor mailing lists so please accept my 
apologies for any flaws in etiquette.
My problem is as follows.
I have been following the instruction of both the fedora websiteand a friend 
in installing the operating system onto a second partition on my computer. 
The computer is only 6 months old and has been attacked by virus' since what 
seems to have been its first moments online. It runs windows xp, now very 
slowly and clumsily, and im sick and tired of it.
i downloaded the cd iso files from the download site accessible through the 
fedora website. i have burned them onto sparate cd's, first using xp's own 
burning programme, and later using the sonic programme (which i think is 
linux based, correct me if im wrong). 
it seemed to work ok, but each time i try to boot from the first cd, it 
simply ignored my request and boots directly from windows.
i dont know how to check the sha1sum values, becuase i have no idea how to 
access the shell from which the programme runs. sorry to sound completely 
ignorant on all counts here, but i could really do with some help.
thanks in anticipation,
sincerely, mike kenward
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