HFO4 system software is bad.

Unable to Load Software on HFO4. The system is an HFO4 (OpenSpeed with Excite and HP Workstation with Linux OS). The applications software was trashed so the FE was going to reload system software. He is trying to load on the Linux OS but when he reboots with the Linux CD in the CDROM Drive as per the software load procedure, it does not go to the Boot Prompt and load from the CD Device. The computer continues on and loads from the hard drive and boots to the login screen. We did some checking in the computer setup screen to be sure of the boot device priority. Found boot order was 1. removeable media, 2. CDROM Drive, and 3. hard disk drive. This is as expected. We went ahead and booted up to the login and logged in as "root". We tried to mount the CDROM Drive and received the following: [1] mount /mnt/cdrom mount: No medium found tried 2 different Linux OS CD's and also a patch CD that was used earlier and received the same error. I am guessing that the CDROM Drive in HP is bad.