Ed,
I think you will want to supply folks with some more information if you hope to get some help. I would suggest that you indicate the motherboard model and what serial ata controller it has (it will also be apparent by the motherboard model). In my case, my serial ata controller is an add-on to the motherboard and requires its own specific driver. Because of this, when I install Windows XP on the drive (actually drives, I have a RAID 0 array of WD Raptors), I have to press F6 (I think that's the key) when the windows CD asks if I need to install a third party SCSI driver. I then load the driver that came on my motherboard install disk which allows Windows to recognize the drive(s).
You'll want to make sure that in your bios you have your cd drive as your first boot drive and, if instructed, press a key to boot off of the CD drive during startup.
If your computer is shutting down before you hit that point, I would double check to make sure that your heatsink is making good contact with your processor. If you still have a problem, I would disconnect all computer components with the exception of the board, memory, processor and video card and make sure they're booting o.k. and start adding stuff back in, one at a time to see if there is a particular component that's hanging you up.
Also, all mainboards have beeps, lights, voices or something else to indicate what part of the process is hanging up the boot. I guess yours has the vocals (ASUS board?) That may give you some help.
Finally, you will not get a dos prompt until you have dos on your system, whether installed into memory minimally by floppy disc or some other way (something has to load dos, it doesn't just reside on a freshly formatted hard drive).
I hope this was of some help. If you still have problems, I would recommend providing additional info.
Matt
