Last IBM recoery disk problem help

[Cassirer]

O.k. I was using a recoery CD and DVD to restore ... but it will not see either my USB port or the DVD with the back up ... and I cannot seem to get it to use the partition to reset it to factory load ... I have tried rebouting with the recovery cd, which loaded, transferred files to the HD and then sad it would formate and recover system ... but when it asked for the cd FinalC it cannot see it ... I burned it an external harddrive, connected the USB and rebouted as it asked... still nothing ...

Help