In the BIOS you need to look for the option to set up the boot sequence and
place the CD-ROM first in line in the boot sequence. Are you sure it is not
recognizing your CD-ROM? When you see the system first boot, do you see a
reference on the first screen to your CD-ROM drive? If yes, the system is
recognizing your CD-ROM drive. A few screens past that you should see a
message that tells you if you wish to boot from the CD you must press any
key, you usually have about ten seconds in which to do this. If you miss
the message, the system will not automatically boot from the CD, it will
continue on if it can or just stop at the next screen with a message to the
effect there is no bootable drive.
You should also realize, using a standard retail version of XP or a
non-customized OEM version, there is no need to wipe the drive nor should
you since all of this can and should be done during XP setup.
That said, if the system in fact is not seeing your CD-ROM drive, while
there are XP floppies available for download for systems that are unable to
boot from the CD-ROM, it only initializes setup, at some point, it will ask
you to place the XP CD in the CD-ROM drive to continue and if your system
cannot see the drive, it won't continue. If that happens, I can only
suggest contacting Compaq tech support as this would no longer be a Windows
issue and there would be no other XP option available.
Here are the links for the XP setup boot floppies:
XP Home
Edition-http://
www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=33290
XP Pro-http://
www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=33291