Installed New CPU Now "cannot detect OS"

SO I recently installed a intel E8500 (3.14ghz wolfdale) processor. I I think I installed everything correctly with the correct amount of thermal paste etc. I was able to run COD4 maxed out along with other things running in the background to give it a quick stress test...I know it puts more GPU strain, but saw no issues.

I left my computer on came back later in the evening (5 hours later) and all I find is a black screen with white letters stating "cannot detect operating system". So I immediately restart, same message comes up. I look through bios, everything seems to be in order. The computer detects all harddrives. What I didn't notice was my RAID config screen didnt show on boot, so I assumed one of the HDD had failed.

I dissconnected the 2 HDDS and tried booting from disk to install on my 3rd HDD (1TB, brand new, forgot the brand). As soon as I go to the windows load screen I get the 0x0000007E message. The motherboard detects the cpu fine. I even went as far as to un install it. clean all the thermal paste, reinstall and reset the cpu settings, which all seemed to be fine and I still get the same error message.

What steps do i need to take to figure out what is wrong with my system. How do i figure out if one of the HDDs failed, which is what I think the main issue is but I should still be able to reinstall windows on another HDD to boot. Any and all advice would be appreciated. It definitely sucks having my main computer go down (writing this from my old laptop...).

Here is my system:

asus commando
E8500 3.14 wolfdale intel core 2 duo
4gb ram (4 1gb modules, brand name...patriot or something, not high end)
2 320 gb HDDs (2 yrs old)
1TB HDD(brand new)
HD4780 radeon

Only put in the hdd with your OS and run a windows repair.