thanks for looking and not helping...nerds
Hmmmm. With that atitude I am not inclined to help you, but I will anyway.

So it works on dekstop & not on laptop? Unfortunatley I can not nail down a perfect answer as I am not psychic. The laptop's CDROM drive may be picky about the brand or written speed of the CDRs that it can read. Similarly the desktop' CDROM drive may read all brands & all written speeds. I discovered a problem like this between two older almost identical systems. I narrowed it down to a poor quality CDROM drive. I replaced it and never had a problem since. In your case I doubt that you will replace the laptop's CDROM drive so you will have to try different CDRs burned at different speeds. When I burn a CDR for use in a 8+ year old CDROM drive I tend to burn them at 8X or 4X speed. It is now up to you to determin the cause of the problem.

I hope this helps.
James