Hey all, I am trying to pretty much clear anything and everything off my computer and start again. I've had this computer for so long, I figured it was about time. I figured out how to back-up files, so I've got everything backed up, and I have my copy of Windows XP Home CD, however here is the problem. When the computer restarts, I have it set to boot CD, Hard Drive 1, Hard Drive 2, and Floppy. It boots from the CD, reads, blah blah blah, and asks me to press any key to boot from CD. This is where the problem comes in, I press any and EVERY key on my keyboard and it does nothing, it just sits there, gets through about 6 clicks, and continues booting normally. I'm absolutely puzzled by this as I can hit the button to open up the boot menu, change information with my keyboard there, yet I can't press any key to continue? My A: Drive doesn't work, so I'm unable to create boot disks and use them through there (not even sure if that would help, but still). Any and all information would be appreciated, if there is another method of wiping everything off both my harddrives and reinstalling windows let me know, cause I can't find it searching google and whatnot.

My CD player is a DVD-RW drive that I just recently purchased and put in there, the drivers are installed and it burns CDs correctly, so im inferring it's installed properly. Thanks for any information!

Do you have another bootable CD to test the DVD drive?

Do you have another computer to test if that XP CD will boot?

Another possibility is to insert the XP CD while in Windows & let it load:

Choose Setup XP & follow the prompts for a Clean Install.

If successful the XP CD will reboot itself.

This could also be a BIOS issue: are you familiar with clearing the CMOS?