Thanks for the all advice guys. I tried all the things that were suggested and I've exhausted my options. I sent the mobo kit back to mwave this morning. I can't even imagine if they find nothing wrong with the mobo kit and send it back to me; Im literally stumped by this problem. Everything...
I actually setup the BIOS to boot from the CD... no dice. I tried different cables, different configurations of master / slave, etc. I also used another DVD drive from an old computer and I also tried a hard drive with an OS on it... no luck there either. I was on the phone with tech support...
When I power up the cpu, I get the message "Boot Disk Error. Please install system disk"... what does that mean? I have an OEM version of MCE 2005, do I need a FULL retail version in order for it to be recognized? For what it's worth, the mobo CD is recognized, but it doesn't help me to...