OS X V10.6 Snow Leopard :: Unable To Install Bootcamp?

I have a mid-2007 MacBook Pro, model A1226, with 4GB RAM.  The optical drive has always been a little off, in that CD's written using the MacBook Pro sometimes can't be read on other systems, but it's never had problems reading CDs/DVDs.  When I had Fusion installed on this machine I was able to install Windows XP and Windows 7 using the optical drive. 

I want to do a Bootcamp install of Windows, either XP or 7.  I have two original WinXP Pro SP2 installation disks (retail, not OEM) and one set of original Win7 Ultimate installation disks, again retail. 

I did a clean install of Snow Leopard after reformatting (erasing) the hard disk, and ran software update.  Then I ran Boot Camp Assistant and created a bootcamp partition.  When I insert an installation disk and click on Start..., after a moment it ejects the disk.  Over and over.  I repeated this many times, with all of the install disks, and the results were the same.   

Except once, and only once, it actually started installing WinXP.  Per the instructions I had WinXP format the bootcamp partition, but the install hung near the end where it was trying to save settings.  Apparently this is a common scenario that some people think is related to having a USB keyboard and mouse connected, but it still hung for me even if I connected a wired keyboard and mouse.  

Lots of reports of similar problems on the web, and I tried a number of suggestions I found here and elsewhere, including:Attached an external DVD drive.  The install DVD doesn't get ejected, but I still get the folder/question mark and failure to reboot for all the installation DVDs.  I suspect that my model MBP doesn't handle booting from external optical drives very well, if at all.  Make copies of the install DVDs.  Although the copies seem to work the same as the originals on my iMac, they produce the same results using both internal and external optical drives.Made a number of different bootable USB sticks, but never found a way to have the required guid partition table at the same time as the Windows boot image, so they weren't bootable on my MacBook Pro.Installed rEFIt and tried using that to boot from USB (still not recognized as a bootable device) and from internal and external drives containing the original or copied installation DVDs. Still get the folder/question mark icon. 

Generally after clicking on Start Installation the system won't boot from the internal drive, but sometimes holding Option works; other times it just refuses to boot until I've tried it multiple times or booted from the Snow Leopard install disk and adjusted the boot record. 

Supposedly listening to the drive and tapping on the case works, but not for me.  I haven't yet tried loosening the mounting brackets because I'm still looking for a T6 driver, but that's another common suggestion. 

Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Model A1226 4 GB Ram