"I've never had to really learn assembler (I took one assembler class in college that taught us on Macs in the early 90's)"
That's ok. I started with old 8080 machine which was compatible with the old Z80 machines and thought I 'knew it all'!
Boy! Was I surprised when I switched over to the 8086/8087 IBM and compatible machines.
Had to start all over again!
i figured it out to boot from cd, just click start then at the top click cd then choose your cd drive... then click "action" then click the "ctrl alt del" option to reboot it. .