Asus A7M266 Boot

[btdmdd]

I am attempting to build a pc (1st time).
I have a new Asus A7M266 m/b that boots through listing PCI devices then stops with a blinking line. It does the same thing whether devices are connected or not. I have tried reassembling
& reseting CMOS multiple times with the same results. When installed the computer recognizes all devices correctly- 40g WD hard drive, 48x cdrw drive, 3.5 drive, 512 pc2100 ram. The only thing it does not get correct is the AMD xp2000 cpu. The BIOS only goes to 1.6ghz at this point. But I can not update without a dos prompt (i assume).

Asus support is time consuming and so far worthless. Any help will be appreciated.

[nukes]

What do you mean, it only recognises a 1.66 or just 1.6ghz cpu? The XP2000 is meant to run at 1.66 anyway. If there is a problem there, try going into the CMOS setup and setting the bus to 100 rather than 133 just so you can boot. Does it hang at the BIOS screen where it detects the hard disks etc, or just afterwards when it gives you a summary?
Have you set the boot order in the BIOS?

[btdmdd]

It only recognizes at 1.6 not 1.66. I already tried setting bus to 100 but still hangs. I'm not too concerned about it not recognizing cpu correctly as an bios update will take care of that unless it is what is causing the system to hang. It hangs after detecting drives, after the drive/memory summary & after listing pci devices-IRQ's, com ports, display controller etc. The place its hangs is where other pcs normally start to load the os. But it does not attempt to boot from the 3.5 drive, or any other for that matter. The boot sequence in the bios is set up-3.5, hd, cdrom.