When burning installation DVDs, you should check the file and the DVD itself for errors. Otherwise problems such as those you described could happen.
Verification should ideally happen in two steps:
1. Verify the downloaded ISO file for integrity
You need to make sure there weren't any errors during download. While this is rather uncommon, it could sometimes happen.
- Download the appropriate checksum file for your installation from the Fedora Verification site or copy the SHA1 checksum when you download the Fedora ISO.
- Also download sha1sum for Windows for checking the SHA1 sum. You might also use Microsoft's FCIV.
- Put this
sha1sum.exe and the Fedora ISO into the same folder.
- Then, go to Start → Run, enter "cmd".
- Use the
cd command to go to the directory where you put the sha1sum.exe and the Fedora ISO.
Run the following command:
sha1sum.exe Fedora-15-i386-DVD.iso
Compare the output of this command with the SHA1 sum of the download. If they're the same, you're fine.
There's a similar tutorial here.
2. Verify the burned DVD for integrity
This is in my experience happening more often than download errors. You need to make sure the data on the DVD itself is exactly the same as the ISO file.
Depending on the software you used for burning, there should be an option to verify a DVD after burning. Look for it in the burning settings. If your DVD passed the verification, you should be fine.
Note that burning at lower speeds can lead to better results (i.e. less errors).
