os load failure

[drew311]

i am setting up a basic system out of my leftovers from an upgrade.  it is a dell optiplex gx-1, 500mhz pent3, 256ram, and a new 60g maxtor hard drive.  the windows 2000pro disk that i have may not be store bought so i was having problems getting it to boot from the setup disk.  i had formatted the drive and partitioned it with the software included and began following instructions to install win.  wasnt gonna happen.  so, i tried, being the genius that i think i am, putting the drive into my existing win2000pro system and installing it on the drive like that.  swapped it back to the new setup, (yes i remembered to switch back the jumpers) start it up and BAM....nada. gave me two errors:
1) PXE-E61: media test failure, check cable.
    PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE
2)OS system load failure

i went into setup and got the PXE business taken care of. now i just get the OS load failure every time i reboot it.  im sure i did something wrong, but i just couldnt get the drive installed on the other system. i may need to make a boot disk on my existing system.  PLEASE IDEAS.  i know a lot about a little and a little about alot.  STUMPED.