No.
a) you can tell if the cdrom is detected during the bios post. It will list all connected HD & CDroms. If the cdrom does not show up there the system does not see it, check cables, etc. Try another cdrom.
b) if the HD is blank and the cdrom is selected as a boot device it will be found and windows will load.
Enter the bios (del or f1 key during boot it will say at bottom of the screen). Boot devices are usually under the second option on main menu. Should be a bunch of options for all installed devices (floppy hd(s) cdrom(s)) under each boot position (1rst, 2nd, etc). Make the cdrom 1rst to start, change it to HD latter when the install is far enough to boot from HD.
Question
Is it a CDROM/CDRW or does it also have DVD in it? If it has DVD you may not be able to install windows from it. Some of the early cd/dvd's needed drivers installed before they would load windows. A friend's would partially load windows then crash. He popped a real cdrom in and it loaded fine.