T23 Recovery after hard drive failure

[nmi]

I just acquired a T23, 2647-HNU, with a bad hard drive. The previous owner gave me no less than four IBM-original sets of a 2-CD recovery package, the part number of the CD's is 32P7290. CD #1 is marked "bootable", CD #2 is marked "non-bootable". When I try to boot any of the 4 CD #1's in either of the optical drives that came with the machine, a CD-RW and a DVD drive, or with a known good CD drive from a T22, I get an I/O error message, or the machine gives up and tries to boot the new hard drive. A known bootable system rescue CD boots just fine, so does a Windows XP distribution CD. When I put any of the 4 "bootable" CD #1's into a running machine, the only data that shows up on the CD is a folder named "Recovery", and it has a bunch of recovery files in it. No sign of any boot files, yes I have "display hidden files" turned on on the running machine that I am using to browse the CD contents.

Am I missing something? I am accustomed to using other IBM recovery disks, usually it's just a load and go.

[RealBlackStuff]

That's the correct part number for "XP-Pro English".
Have you tried them in another laptop or PC?
Your T23 drive might be 'sick'.