Hard Drive Help

I have an 8100 diminsion series desktop.  My hard drive is dying and I have a new one sent to me by Dell.  I have taken and backed up all of my files and folders onto a 160GB external hard drive.  In addition I have all of the xp pro/windows, etc, cd's sent with my system.  When I put in the new hard drive, would I go to set-up and change it so it will boot up from the cd, re-boot the system and then put in my windows cd, if so then do I just continue with all other cd's that were sent with the system.  Are there any other things I need to look at or address when I put in the new HD?  Thank you in advance for any help you can give me, after all the time I have used or had a PC this is the first time I have had a HD crash or getting ready to crash on me, I know I have been very lucky, but putting in a new HD and the steps that go with it is not something I am real experienced with.  Thanks.