can't get laptop to boot from cd

I need to reformat a Sony VAIO laptop. I have the OS cd, but
even though I can get it to see it, I can't get it to boot from it. I
went into setup and made cd first boot (of course) and have tried
disabling boot from anything else. It lists hard drive, floppy, cd
and network. It seems that the cd reader is slow to read,.. too
slow before it tries to boot from hard drive. If I disable hard drive,
it immediately says no os.

I have tried copying the os cd to a different brand medium thinking
that maybe it just wasn't reading that cd. Nope, no luck. I don't
know how to make it boot from network. Not sure how to do that.
I figure I would need a server (which I don't have).

any other ideas??????????


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