OK, have a Toshiba L505 (not sure of the extended model number) that got a virus on Windows and will no longer will boot into that, so I'm trying to revive it with Ubuntu. Problem is, when I tell it to boot into a USB image of 12.04 32- or 64-bit, 13.04 64-bit, or elementary Luna 32-bit, it gives me some screen with a copyright from 2000 for Intel, invariably spits out a "media not recognized" type of error and then says PXE-ROM exiting.

Well, that's annoying.

So I went in with a CD (12.04 x86_64 having tried 32-bit in the past as well). Boot menu, select, starts running. Seeing the loading screen for Ubuntu, going well... until it's not. Again, invariably, it fails. The CD drive will cease spinning at around the same time each time and then the laptop will stop doing everything altogether (at least, everything spins down and it goes quiet). As far as I can tell, it's not to do with what function is being loaded from the CD at the time (because that bit is variable).

I'd love to be able to boot from USB (since it will be all but required going forward), but getting the CD to work would be wondrous too.

Anyone have any ideas of where I can go from here to try to fix this? My friends and I have turned up nothing.