Ubuntu 10.10 disc did not install and boot alongside Windows XP

I am somewhat disgruntled about the Ubuntu 10.10 disc I received with magazine PCpro. Apparently there is no physical damage to it. The live disc demo works perfectly. Interestingly, the live disc can show all my computer hardware setup and partitioning exactly as is.

I decided to attempt an installation alongside Windows XP Home Edition following the onsceen instructions. I have a Pentium 4 dual core machine with two hard drives arranged as JBOD. One disc has little used space so there is nearly 250GB free space and the software on the live disc initially chose to install on that disc. The installation appeared to proceed flawlessly and reached the continue to 'play' or restart computer stage. I clicked the restart button, the disc was ejected but the restart failed! There was a long string of IO error messages in white on a black screen and things just stopped. Fortunately my computer will restart, but only in XP.

I have attempted the process several times. Sometimes Windows will start a CHK DISK process before rebooting. Investigation of the XP disk management utility shows that a partition has been created that 'possibly apertains to another operating system' or words to that effect. After each attempt I have deleted the stuff on the newly created Linux partitions to avoid the possibility of confusion and the disc's free space being used up.

I have also directed the software to install on the second disc that has Windows XP installed on one partition alongside a partition that contains most of my personal files. The result is as already described.

Following the installation process I was expecting to see a screen notice giving the choice of a Ubuntu or Windows XP boot. Should that have been the case?

Weirdly, I have successfully used the same disc to install Ubuntu on my laptop which is running windows Vista. I am at a loss to know how to solve the problem with my desktop.

Please to enlighten me.