Sounds like you might need a boot floppy if the CD is not booting. The Windows upgrade CD probably won't boot as I'm guessing it doesn't have boot files included. I may be mistaken on this, but it seems to make sense.

The original CD you are trying, is this a Compaq (or HP?) recovery CD? I haven't used one recently, but I do recall Compaq PCs/laptops had their own way of wanting these things done. That was before they were purchased by HP, so this may have changed.

Another option for cleaning the hard drive would be to use system tools from the hard drive manufacturer. You might have to pull the hard drive out to determine who this is. Each manufacturer makes boot disk utilities for doing this. Of course if you are still unable to install the OS after this, you would leave you in a serious bind, so this would proabably be only for a last resort.

Sometimes you carpe diem, sometimes your diem gets carped.