help after installing new motherboard

Okay...I am new to this forum, but really need some expert advice.

I have an older HP desktop that started acting up by freezing randomly...big surprise out of warranty. 3 yrs old.
I just replaced the motherboard with an ASUS P5G41T-MLX and reused my pentium dual-core E2220 chip. Kept same hard drive and CD/DVD drive, upgraded power to 450W coolmaster while I was at it.
Changed it all out and tried to boot up with restore CD's that came with unit...no joy as it will not recognize the new motherboard...was vista by the way.
So i order a new Windows 7 home premium OS and I can't get it to boot from the CD. Have been in the bios and changed the boot order to the CD drive first...no joy.
It goes into a black screen with flashing cursor for a few minutes and I can hear the CD drive working, Then it goes into a windows error recovery screen.
start windows normally just restarts computer, startup repair does its thing for a few minutes and shows a screen that says it cant repair this computer automatically.

anyway, i want to wipe it clean and do a fresh install of windows 7 I just got, but cant get it to boot from disk.

To be honest with you it just sounds like old components... in my experience, I'd take a system like this and start troubleshooting hardware.. Try a different ROM drive if you have a spare, try a different HDD, etc. etc. until you find the problem, and move on from there.

I would expect your recovery CD not to work, as the media is specific to the hardware that came with your computer in the first place. The brand new installation CD however, it sounds more like a hardware issue than anything else. Start with the ROM... it may not be able to read the disc properly.

I just found a way into dos and ran setup and got it to start working...not sure why it wouldn't do it on its own.

Can you tell us how dos helped exactly? Sounds interesting.