NeoSmart CD does not boot.

I'm trying to recover an HP Pavilion with a Windows 7 looping Startup Repair screen. I download the CD to another computer and Burned a CD. I first changed the boot sequence to start from the CD first. I checked the BIOS and verified the setting. I inserted the CD in the CD ROM Drive of the HP Pavilion and started the computer. The CD does engage and begin to read but then Windows continues to the Startup Repair screen. What next?
 
Do you see "press any key to boot from CD" when you start your PC with the repair disc in the tray ?
If not, you are not booting from a good repair disc.
Try it in another working PC to see if it boots there to eliminate the possibility of an u/s optical drive.
 
Paradoxically, the first message from the booted CD is "press any key .....".
Blame Microsoft for the illogicality of that. If you don't see that message, then you're not booting from a good CD so you need to find out if the CD was badly burned or whether it's just your PC that can't access it.
 
Checklist:

A few different things to check:

1) Is the CD burned right? When you insert it into another PC, you should be able to see a few files (including a Welcome.exe) on the CD when you open it in My Computer.
2) Did you use the right medium? You probably should have burned this onto a CD-R (instead of DVD-R). If that doesn't work, try using a DVD-R instead.
3) Is the laptop configured to boot from the CD? This is typically done by pressing a key when you first turn your PC on to select the boot device, or else entering the BIOS and configuring it from there.
 
I just purchased a Vista 32 bit repair disk from NeoSmart due to a compressed bootmgr file. It will not load despite being burned to both a CD and a flash drive. I have definitely set BIOS to boot from CD group first to no avail. I keep getting the "bootmgr is compressed" error immediately after the initial diagnostic screen. Please advise. I have tried a number of keys to force a cd boot and none have worked. It is an HP Pavilion desktop a6223w. If I need to start a new thread for this I will do so.
 
Do you see "press any key...." when you boot with the CD in the tray ?
If not, check the CD has burned properly on another working PC to see if it boots there.
Check your BIOS setting/CD-ROM drive by booting a known good bootable CD (an old Windows/Linux/Partition Manager etc)
The combination should pinpoint the faulty component.
Remember an optical drive has different lasers for CD/DVD, so that's another possibility. One might be OK and the other u/s.
 
Do you see "press any key...." when you boot with the CD in the tray ?
If not, check the CD has burned properly on another working PC to see if it boots there.
Check your BIOS setting/CD-ROM drive by booting a known good bootable CD (an old Windows/Linux/Partition Manager etc)
The combination should pinpoint the faulty component.
Remember an optical drive has different lasers for CD/DVD, so that's another possibility. One might be OK and the other u/s.

As I said, the "compressed bootmgr" error appears immediately after forcing boot from CD. No choices or options. When I use a flash drive it says "NTLDR missing". I am able to boot HP's PC Tools and other junk which runs but does not give me a usable command prompt. I even tried a Windows 7 repair disk, but it gives me an error code that is specific to Toshiba (where it came from) after the normal windows load screens. I can try a DVD but I am not thinking the optical drive is the problem.

EDIT: I think the problem may be the way I burned the images - I may have extracted them with bitZipper instead of burning the iso - so I will try doing this again with an image burner and report back.
 
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That would indeed stop you from being able to boot from it. Please follow the burning instructions exactly as they're written.
 
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