won't boot from windows cd

Hello all,
I am a first time poster and hopefully you all can help me with my problem. I am building a new computer and everything is new except the harddrive. I pulled the harddrive out of my old dell machine hoping to save all my files. I can't boot from the harddrive or the windows cd. I have a windows professional xp cd that I was hoping would boot and then reconfig the harddrive to match the new motherboard. Any suggestions.
Chip

 

Thanks Petec,
That is what I find strange. Yes I can see the WD40gig HD in the bios during the initial power up sequence. I changed the boot sequence to be cd rom, floppy and then harddrive. I even tried taking the harddrive out of the sequence completely. I see it looking at the cd rom but it scolls something pretty quick and then comes up with the screen that wants me to choose safe mode. If I choose safe mode the system just restarts with the bios boot.

Chip

 

When you try to boot from the cdrom, do you see the screen that says something like press any key to boot from atapi cdrom?

You said it scrolls something real fast. Try pressing the pause key on the keyboard when it gets to that point. Maybe you can get a look at what it says that way.

How is the cdrom drive set up? Is it on the primary IDE controller with the hard drive or is it on the secondary controller. How are the jumpers set on it. It might not hurt to try setting it up as a master on the secondary controller if it's not already set up that way and then try booting from it.