Gidday Pheonix5,
I'm a new user aswell. Have you tried the Justlinux site at http://justlinux.com/index.php
If you havn't give them ago they are full of great info.
The first things that I was asked were are your bios settings correct.
you should disable auto pnp and also make sure that the system is set to boot from cdrom.

Regards Andrew

p.s. If you get anymore info to help my problem out (check postings by AndrewVDP) it would be appreciated..