Not sure what your doing wroing.  Maybe using wrong disc.  But you should be able to boot off the OS CD.  Did you look at the boot order in the Setup (Bios).   I would change it to make the CD/DVD the first device it looks for on boot up.  

 

Good luck.

I tried that also, I get the F1 F2 message.  I then tried a different CD drive all together.  CD Drive works, I can boot to command propmpt and put a CD in and I can see the contents of the CD.

I have the exact same problem on a Dim4600.

 

Pulled the drive, installed in internally on another computer, wiped it clean several times, reinstalled it in the 4600.  CD will NOT boot to install windows no matter what. 

 

I just did the exact same thing with a different 4600.  Any ideas?

Problem Solved.  I downloaded from Microsoft the boot diskettes for my version of Windows XP.  Ran through the boot with the disks, at the end it went straight into the Win XP installation process.  If you follow this process make sure you download the correct diskette version.  (if you have WinXP Home SP2, that is the diskette version you will need)  If you get the wrong version it will fail on the software installation.  I can now say it is working and the PC is back to normal. 

 

Still say this is a crazy way to have to image a PC.  Would have been much easier if the XP disk was bootable.  I tested my XP pro cd and it worked without issues, this was a MS supplied disk.  

 

 

Got my problem fixed. I have a DVD and CD-R.  Someone suggested the DVD might be flaky.  Pulled it off the bus and booted from CD-R. Tweeked the BIOS too.