Troubles With A Computer We're Building

[counterpoint]

Okay... this message is likely to be long. But bear with me. If you get bored, just skim straight through to the technical stuff.
My dad (with the assistance of his neighbors and myself) is trying to build a new computer. This one, the one I'm typing on right now, is intended to be for business and office work he and his wife will work on (I think he's also worried this computer is a bit too crowded with useless applications... but if he asked me for help, I could probably wipe those off in all of 5 seconds). The one we're working on is more for pursuits of pleasure/gaming, with my younger brother specifically in mind.
Anyways, I'd like to say I'm an intermediate computer user, at least when it comes to software. I know how to do most everything on a computer except programming. I know nearly nothing about computer hardware though, although I'm just beginning to learn. And while my dad has the basics of computer hardware down, he knows next to nothing about software interface (for example, he doesn't even know how to copy and paste items onto a floppy disk, or set an internet home page, etcettera). So now that I've gotten home from school, we've sort of been working on building this computer together. But at the moment we're at a logjam and we don't know how to go further.
The hardware, at least to my little knowledge, works. The computer turns on and off smoothly, everything is in its right place, etcettera. I "installed" and updated the BIOS for him about 4 days ago, via a floppy disk. I've never done this before, but when I did it, it seemed to go perfectly. It displayed a visual which indicated it was "downloading", and then we got an Intel screen. Plus we have several new menus that weren't available before BIOS installation/update.
But we've been working for 4 days now, and we haven't been able to get Windows onto the computer. We have a Windows XP disk. I think (I may be wrong, if so, do say so) that what's suppose to happen is the BIOS should be able to get the information on the Windows XP CD-ROM into the hard drive, correct? But here's the thing-- first of all, the Boot Menu (which I get to by pressing F8 after the Intel screen loads) only displays "1st Slave: Lite on DVD SHD-16PIS and NOT the primary CD-ROM drive. So it seems like its not recognizing the CD drive which is necessary in booting XP from the CD. It also does not display the "Hard Disk", it only reads as an option "Bootable Add-In Cards". However, the hard disk is fully connected to the rest of the computer. So it seems like it won't recognize either the hard drive or the cd-rom drive, the two drives that we relly need to get the proccess rolling. The floppy disk works, apparently.
One final thing: when the computer, loads it reads:
Boot from CD. It then immediately reads:
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. This is where I insert the XP CD into the CD-ROM, wait a few seconds for the ROM drive to compute, and then press enter- it simply repeats the above message, however many times I do it.
Thanks for any help and suggestions you can give me. If you figure any of this out, it should be a tremendous time-saver in our quest to get this computer up and running. And if I'm right, I think this will be the last uphill charge in building this computer.
-Matt

[Chaky]

1. CD is always the SLAVE drive, unless you have 2 CD drives on same IDE channel (read: on same cable), so if you set your CD drive's jumper on MASTER it will not work.

2. You didn't state what kind of Hard disc nor chipset/motherboard is installed. Is it IDE or ATA?
If it's ide (40-pin cable, identical to CD drive's one) then it MUST be jumper-set on master, otherwise the BIOS will not recognize the drive.

3. If it is a combination of ATA hd and XP professional (not SP1 or 2) then you have another issue on your hands. Apperently, XP pro has trouble with recognizing ATA drives (technicaly, controllers like Nforce4), so you will have to make driver floppy, the one you will need to insert upon windows setup message to press f6 for 3rd party drivers.
Your CD that came with your motherboard is bootable, and, prior to installing the win you will have to boot from that cd to make the driver floppy.

There is allways possibility that you flashed wrong version of bios. It doesn't allways have to go blank-screen on you.

P.S. It is ironic that only way to setup high-end machine like that is by FLOPPY disc.

[djrivera1]

Check your boot order in bios.