Problem Trying To Format New Boot Drive

I thought I had a decent knowledge of "all that is PC", but I'm stuck on this one. I am attempting to start from scratch - I purchased a new Western Digital SATA hard drive, which I want as my bootable drive. I can get into the reasons why I am attempting this, but that would make for too long of a comment. Anyway, I have a Dell Dimension 8400 desktop and I changed the boot sequence to boot from the PATA CD-ROM that I have installed on the PC. I am attempting to boot using the Windows XP installation disk from the CD-ROM driave and even though the drive is recognized by the bios, I receive a message when I attempt to boot - "No boot device available". I aplologize if this is a much-too-basic question. Thanks

Can't give a definitive answer with that info, but here are some things to check, should be fairly simple to do. I suggest unplugging the other hard drive(s) to start with, it makes identifying them during the install easier, and stops the OS drive from being other than the C drive, also unplug any external drives and card readers. Now with the optical drive, not sure on relevance to this situation, but I mention it incase, as it's an ide drive make sure it is connected on the end plug (if using a 3 plug lead) and that the jumpers are set to master, if they are set to master and no joy then select to CS (Cable Select), some systems only play nice with one or the other setting and not both. Next go into the bios settings, can't tell you exact locations, but your looking for a couple of entries (assuming it has them), boot order is 1st as you have already done, then make hard drive next followed by floppy if you have one, if not set to disabled, now the other entries are to do with drive priority and the like, this is separate from the boot order, with all else disconnected there should only be the 1 entry really. The last setting to check is to do with the Sata controller etc, some systems allow you to turn on\off specific Sata ports, other systems require the controller to be set a specific way to see and use the hardware, if your not using raid then do not use the raid option, BUT, do make sure Sata is turned on, and in the raid drop down box it probably has 2 other options, Advanced\Enhanced is probably one, and the other is AHCI which is probably not required, I also recall seeing an option to do with run Sata as ide or something, sorry I can't be precise, but hopefully with what you see in front of you, and this, you will hopefully figure it out, good luck.