T500 will not boot from bootable CDs/DVDs, but will read and open files on them

 System: 2 T500s, both manufactured early April 2009, win XP, ATI Radeon 3650 graphics,4GB RAM, latest Lenovo drivers installed..
 Problem:-   Our 2 T500s cannot boot from any windows coded recovery CD -except Lenovo's rescue/recovery discs. Some -but not all- Linux code recovery CDs do boot the T500. Every other kind of CD and DVD such as audio and video works fine in windows XP.
Here an example of our 2 T500s' failure to recognise bootable CD/DVD discs. All the files and folders on a Paragon Partition Mgr v8.5 Recovery CD can be viewed in windows explorer and files such as jpg, txt and zip can be opened. This CD will not boot the T500, however, it will boot our other -non-Lenovo- computers. The same applies when the media are DVDs with identical content.
We have tried several different kinds of CD and DVD media to no avail. Burning the media on other computers and using several kinds of burning software does not help, ourT500s refuse to boot from them too.
The problem seems clear enough, on starup our T500s fail to distinguish between windows coded bootable and ordinary CDs/DVDs -unless they are Lenovo recovery/restore discs.
A solution would be gratefully received.

Thank you for your very kind assistance,
Q: "1. Did you apply the DVD firmware fix here?"
A. It was` already installed on our 2 T500s. We have also applied just about every driver update from Lenovo.
Q: "2. Did you try booting from a USB optical drive that you first attached to another system where you could verify that booting from it was possible?"
 A. Yes, many times from a USB CD/DVD drive, it failed too. We burned on that drive too, but the T500s will not boot from those CDs either.
Q: "3. In this thread the solution was to use another burning program than Roxio..".
 A. We have used the Paragon internal ISO creator/burner, the Roxio burner that was preinstalled wth the T500, BartPE internal ISO/burner ,InfraRecorder and others too. Made ISOs and burned from them, burned CDs directly on the fly etc, all to no avail..
 For some reason, our two T500s' CD/DVD drive controllers or some intermediate software act as if the CD's boot sector is not present. Clearly, something (BIOS, software, unstable hardware, or ? ) is blocking the read or write of the data necessary to boot these CDs. Whatever that 'something' is, it has no effect on burning and booting Lenovo recovery CDs.
The bizarre part of all this is that a`Lenovo recovery CD burned on the T500 drive WILL BOOT the T500. A Paragon v8.5 recovery CD or BartPE CD burned in one of our non-Lenovo computers will boot ithat and every other computer we have except our T500s.
PS Thank you for the link to the new version of Roxio, will download and install it.

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