CD burning tips for iso images - especially slow machines
Tip #1. Burn at a speed slow enough for your target machine to handle!
You can avoid this source of frustration by finding your machines rated read-speed, and making sure that you burn it no faster than, and preferable even slower than what your cd or dvd device can handle. This can often happen when you burn an image on your powerbook for example, and intend to install onto your slower iMac. You must find a way to burn slower. Speeds of 1X or 2X are not uncommon, especially if your cdrom has aged, is dusty, etc.
I've had the best luck by burning onto quality CD-R's. Sometimes changing to a different cd manufacturer's cd / dvd media can help. CD-RW's proved to be troublesome. YMMV.
There are many burning guides available, but for newcomers you must make sure you are actually burning it as an iso, and not just copying it over.
In OSX, you can use disk-utility. Open disk utility, and drag your downloaded iso image into the left hand pane. Highlight the iso image, and click burn, but remember to lower the recording speed. I haven't fired that up in awhile, so maybe someone can tell me if disk-utility even has a speed option?
In Windows, I like Iso-Recorder for it's simplicity: