Hopefully , This will help eliminate alot of heart ache that I went thru learning to burn. Many of us are downloading linux from mirrors onto a windows computer and then burning the cd to find it does not work. The download part is not always the problom ! There should be a file in the program from the mirror called MD5 or MD5 check sum. This is a varifacation key. To check this key you can use a free program called md5 checksummer Once the program is downloaded use this program to generate a md5 and it should match the one in the file from the download site of the program if it does not then it was corrupted during the download. In this case delete the program files and try again sometimes the files on the mirror are corrupted themselves . Also run a virus scan on the files. Second is the burn , Do Not pull up the file and copy to cd on windows , this will leave you a perfectly good drink coaster. Instead start your cd burning program and then select burn ISO or exact copy from disk. And then select the program ISO you downloaded also use a slower burn speed for this file to help ensure it is not corrupted during the burn. Then use the md5 program to verify the cd as you did before. This is alot of work but it will be worth it in the long run.

Speaking of ISO burning I suppose using ISO-burner tool. It is very easy to use and reliable
http://www.ntfs.com/iso-burning.htm

I recommend you to use magiciso to burn iso file to dvd. It is very reliable and easy to use.
http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-burniso.htm

i use DeepBurner free edition (its really free, no nag screens or anything and it does data cds/dvds as well and it can also do cover art)

If you guys are already using linux then you don't need any extra apps to check an md5sum. Just open a konsole or a terminal ad cd to the place where you have the iso. Then enter this into the terminal md5sum followed by the exact name of the file. thew md5 will be generated in twenty seconds or more depending on your system speed. So to check the md5sum on a dsl iso that I have , the entry would look like this
md5sum dsl-3.3RC1.iso
The md5sum will be there for you to see.

kerry@0[~]$ md5sum dsl-3.3RC1.iso
2c29694d938591d6973dd8633173d7f6 dsl-3.3RC1.iso
This only took me about 15 seconds and I don't need any extra apps to do it.
K3b can check the md5sum too. Just scroll down to where k3b is calculating the md5sum and when it is done you left click the md5sum that k3b figured. That will make a button appear at the right side of the k3b md5sum. Press the button and a box will pop up where you can paste the md5sum that you got from wherever you downloaded the file into the box and hit apply or ok I forget but it will compare the two md5sums. Also with k3b you can check a box to test the cd for errors. It will tell you that the file seems binary correct or not.

Oops. Sorry about the double post.