I need help.ive got a dell desktop that's been wiped clean. I've gone to the boot seqeunce and selected to boot from cd drive but it only gives me a response that says "strike f1 to retry reboot or f2 for setup utility... help want to get this done as a xmas present for my son

As soon as you boot up, hit F8 (or F12, depends on BIOS). It'll bring you to a boot selection screen. Then choose CD-Drive and it should work.

That's what I did and am receiving the F1 or F2 option that I stated above now what ?

If you don't have a bootable CD in the drive and no bootable partitions on your hard drive, then what are you booting to the CD for?
Are you trying to install the OS (as in Windows 7, Windows Vista, Unix, etc.)?
If you don't have an OS, you really can't use any graphical interfaces.
If you do have a bootable CD, you might be having errors connecting your CD drive to your motherboard.

Yeah I'm trying to load an OS I've got my window vista cd in the drive when I boot.. the light on the drive comes on momentarily but doesn't take me anywhere to install or load it

If anything, it might be internal settings or maybe you don't have a partition on the hard drive. Most OS installation disks will create a partition for you though. I'm thinking it might be jumper settings on the drives don't correspond to how they're connected to the motherboard.

I think you should try and hit startup utility (computer settings essentially). You should set all the simple configurations and save them. There will also be a boot order and switch the CD/DVD drive to first. If you could, please give me some specifications of your computer. It may help.

This is one problem that's leaving me completely confused... and I've got a lot of experience with evil Dells.

yeah im trying to load an OS ive got my window vista cd in the drive when i boot..the light on the drive comes on momentarily but doesnt take me anywhere to install or load it

Are you sure it's an OS cd? It sounds like its trying to boot from CD but the CD isn't bootable. What's does the disc say on it?