Problem booting Mint 6 from CD?

I am trying to boot from the .iso DVD I downloaded. I am running Vista on a MSI GT725 with a HD 4850 mobility graphics card. When I start/boot the laptop with the DVD, the Linux Mint screen pops up and then goes to a message which ends with:

To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

mint@mint ~ $

It also has a little diagram of a bear with a little riddle. Why is this popping up? Did I do something wrong?

 

I haven't run the Mint LiveCD, but the first part about using sudo is normal... the riddle is probably just the /etc/motd file which is displayed on each login. It stands for message of the day, it's often customized.

 

So do I just enter sudo or do I have to put something else with it?

 

Try entering 'startx' and give us the results.
It's really odd, did you md5 check your iso? It could also be a bad burn.

 

I burned a new disk from torrent and tried again. Started like before and went to command line - mint@mint ~ $:
I tried to use "sudo startx" and got a fatal error answer. Any suggestions why the live cd will not progress on my laptop?

 

Hmm, what video driver do you have? also, try this
'sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start'.

 

This laptop has the ATI 4850 mobility graphics card; Driver Packaging Version 8.56-081112a-072695C-MSI. I know that the Radeon cards have more problems than the NVidia cards, could that be the problem?

 

Actually no, The Radeon card shouldn't be to hard.
Nvidia has gained a habit of making bad drivers.
Then again, I dunno about the new 4xxx series.

 

I tried the last recommended command line and it stated [OK], but nothing else happened. I think it must have something to do with the display drivers.

 

Frustrated. I would love to test out Mint on this system, but still am unable to get this thing to the desktop!

 

Try ubuntu, then..

 

When Mint fails Ubuntu is usually far less buggy, and Jaunty is more up to date than Mint 6.