Motherboard prob, I think..

Putting together a computer for my wife and ran into a prob. I got everything hooked up and plugged in, fired it up, kicked on no prob, showed the memory check no prob. Then I wait, sometimes 30 seconds sometimes 3 minutes, IDE drives found. Now I wait for it to boot to the cd to install xp, 15 minutes later.. after a few window install screens it says there is no hard drive, guessing because its not formatted.
But my question is why is it going soooo slow.

biostar m7ncd
barton xp2500+
512 kingston pc2700
80 gig maxtor
lite -on cdrw
Saphine Raedon 9800 pro

it reconizes my cpu as a 2500+, I took the ram from my computer so I no it works.
What can I try to narrow this down?

this is the mobo I got
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?description=13-138-216&DEPA=1

I had a similar problem. Try reseating your video card. I know it sounds strange, but the same symptoms happened to me

I would think this might be a harddrive problem. Try changing the jumper settings on the drive and see if that helps, or try completely taking the jumper off, that's what I did when I was having some slow downs, but I have a WD.