More stable than Windows my arse

"I'll try Linux." I thought. My beloved told me Ubuntu came highly recommended so I scoot over to their website and grab the install disc iso. Checked the md5sum, all good so I burn the CD and boot from it. A cute menu gives me the option to start or install so I go with that. Bear in mind that the Ubuntu website says that the install disc will sort dual boot, including resizing partitions with existing OSs in place. I got the flakiest desktop ever...most of the time apps wouldn't start or when they did they crashed almost immediately. This should have been a warning but I went back to XP to find a browser that actually functioned and read the install instructions again. "Click on 'install' and follow the prompts." it said. I did that. True to form nothing happened...apparently. Now my machine won't boot from the Ubutu disc, nor the Win XP install CD nor the hard drive. It gets partway through an XP boot and stalls. I'm typing this on doushkasmum's laptop and I can't think of a way to fix this given that I can't boot from an OS install CD.

Help.