Another problem is that my situation is probably an outlier. My computer is in Spanish, which makes it a lot harder to mess with. Plus, it runs on Windows XP from 2002. On top of that, my disk drives are slightly messed up. They burn correctly according to the MD5 hashes, but one of them might not read well. Finally, none of the two computer-literate people I know are around, and "build your own PC" books are hard to find, universally in Spanish, and expensive (here in Santiago).
I'll keep trying until I find the stupid mistake I've been making all along.
And you're right. I'm being hostile; I've spent too much time over the computer over the last few days, and I'm going a little crazy. But, much like being drunk, driving oneself crazy does not excuse what you do/say when you're kind of crazy. I apologize.
Edit: both CD drives work properly.
Edit: I followed the tutorial, and burned the CD. I'm going to reboot now (both fingers crossed).
"The computer is personal again."
I feel like people who write those tutorials assume a basic computer literacy from their readers. I am not assaulting you, I am replying to an assault: you have no idea how to burn a bootable CD. Period. You're not even ready to install an OS, any kid of OS. So go get yourself a basic "Build your own PC" kind of book, read it, and then try more advanced tasks such as installing operating systems.