Can't boot from XP OS disk

Thanks, dunedin,  but I tried that.  I get into the Bios and in boot sequence check only CD (but it says next to that no device is installed) and it still won't boot.  A message says No boot device available.  I can't understand this because last night I did get 5 choices, chose CD, but it took hours and then froze.  So I started over today.  Any further suggestions would be very much appreciated.  Thank you all.

I don`t have a Dimension, so look in your manual for the key to press to get into BIOS at boot up.

When you get into the BIOS set the order of boot up to be the CD first,

Your machine will then boot up from the CD

Is your CD drive not recognised?

Look if it shows up in My Computer

1. Right click My Computer / Properties / Hardware / Device Manager.
Look for "Yellow" errors against the CD drive.  Right click it /Properties and check it all out for errors.

Have you tried pressing F8 while booting up.  If this works you will get to the Advanced Options.

Try Safe Mode  and do a System Restore back to a week previous.

Or try Last Known Good Config.

Thanks again for the suggestion, but I can't even get into the computer to check -- after the Dell icon it just gives me F1 to retry or F2 the bios, then nothing... 

Nothing works, but I did find that on the BIOS where it says Primary Drive 0 it should say Hard Drive and at Secondary Drive 0 it should say CD-ROM Reader, but in both it says Uknown Device!  And I can't change them!

I think I will try posting this on the BIOS board -- thank you so much for trying to help me with this. Much appreciated. John

Okay dokey,

Good luck