Laptop not reading operating system.

[DBButterfly]

I have an acer inspire laptop. My ex-roommate had installed and partioned both windows 7 and ubuntu linux onto it so I could switch back and forth between operating systems because I'm too lazy to always have to code out what I want the laptop to do. After 3 months the laptop is not detecting either operating system. When I try to boot up the ubuntu disk it leaves me with the following message:

uncomppressing linux... ok, booting the kernel.
[4294668.025000] PCI: Cannot allocate resource regin 0 of device 0000:00:1f.6

It won't even allow me to run the disk as a live system like the book states I can do before deciding to install.

How do I get the ubuntu disk to boot up linux so it will actually read an operating system?
The book says I don't need to have an operating system on the laptop before installing linux. Is this true?
And simply what do I do next?

[arochester]

Have you changed the BIOS/Boot Order so that it boots from the CD-Rom first before the Hard Disk?

[DBButterfly]

yes I did do that.