the beep your hearing is an indication that a piece of hardware isn't functioning properly, your cd-rom the probly the issue. try removing it. then set the bios to boot from the hard drive first.
I agree, my experience is that a solid beeping is that the vomputer is "stuck" at a bad location. I suppose that when you open the cd-rom it bypasses the issue.
Though I have to say that this one is a new one for me!