CD-ROM acting strange when trying to boot from XP CD

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

I have two identical 5 year old laptops. Each has a combo
DVD/CD/floppy drive. When both systems were new, you could boot from
the CD drive when that option was turned on in the BIOS.
About 1 year ago laptop A was still bootable from the CD. However,
something happened to the CD drive on laptop B so that the only disks
it could read were either audio CDs or movie DVDs.
If I put in the XP CD and tried to boot, it sat stalled and never put
up the message on the screen "To boot from the CD, press any key ...".
If I booted from XP on the hard drive and then tried to look at a
software CD, this failed also. The problem appeared to be with B's CD
drive, because if I switched the CD drives between the two laptops, the
problem followed to where B's CD drive was installed.

Now this past weekend a similar problem has occured. If I take A's CD
drive and install it on either laptop, it refuses to boot from a
bootable CD such as my XP CD or my Ghost 9.0 CD. Even though it
refuses to boot, if I boot up XP from the hard drive and then put in
the Ghost CD for example, it is able to read and execute the CD.
Again, if I switch the CD drive to a different laptop, the problem
occurs there also.

So now I have two CD drives:

Drive A - Can play audio CDs, video DVDs, software
Can't be booted from

Drive B - Can play audio CDs and video DVDs
Doesn't recognize software and can't be booted from

I'm puzzled - I would think a CD/DVD drive would be either good
or bad, not that they can be capable performing some functions but not
others. Does this behaviour sound logical and is it to be expected as
a drive gets older? Thanks!