You can connect both mouse and keyboard before installing Windows, durkinjt. I only said that for the adjusting settings in the BIOS you don't need a mouse. This shouldn't affect the boot sequence however, so I don't know why Windows setup doesn't start any more. Did you hit "any key" to boot from CD when prompted? Is it a PS/2 or a USB type mouse? Maybe you have another one you can try with? Also, in the BIOS you can select "Load Optimized Defaults" and "Save & Exit", then check/adjust the boot options again to make it start from CD.

On a side-note, Service Pack 3 for XP is being released officially today. Since you're doing a fresh install, I recommend that you "slipstream" SP3 into your XP CD before installing Windows. You can probably google some how-to guides for doing this with the /integrate command. There's also a possibility to do this with a little program called nLite.

Here's a download link where you can already get SP3 from the Microsoft servers: http://majorgeeks.com/Microsoft_Wind...nal_d4323.html