*smacks head*
No one can or will walk you through how they think effects should be applied. The magic button doesnt exist bro.

I doubt you will get "professional" sounding results with your rather "budget" gear. At best it's going to sound like something you recorded at home, ie demo work.

To learn how to use cool edit, read the manual.

Go and read all the articles on audio
here:
http://www.soundonsound.com/articles
here:
(Dead Link Removed)
here:
http://www.emusician.com/
here:
http://djbb.dk/floops/index.php?cat=docs
here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rongonz/home_rec/home.html
here:
(Dead Link Removed)

Come back in a few months when you soak that up and have SPECIFIC questions.

effects

sounds like your just starting out in the world of recording which is great more the merrier,but what you have wont get you pro sounding results you will have to spend to get that,as for helping you with effects is a tricky one all effects really are a form of artistic prefference, but what i can say is you need to try different ideas rather than presets,presets are only a starting block on which you can expand your sound with,dont be worried about altering eqs compressors reverbs and so on its the best way to learn about what these do and how they alter the sound,

It depends what you wnat to achieve - as an Audio recording daw Cool Edit Pro is just fine, I doubt you would notice the difference in raw audio data vs Logic, PT, Cubase, Sonar etc.

Cool Edit does not include a midi sequencer, so you are limited to recording audio - Since Adobe bought it (and particularly audition 2.0) it includes some very good effects built in and limited midi support.

Whilst you might not be able to achieve the same results as someone with a rack of hardware effects, top range converters, pres, sequoia/pt hd/ nuendo/sawstudio and studio acoustics/mics/equipment etc. you can still achieve a lot that sounds pro to the untrained ear if you are very careful and prepared to read up and experiment a lot before commiting to mastering/burning CD's etc.

A good place for newbies to start is
http://www.tweakheadz.com/doing_it_with_digital.html

The single most common mistake made is that people think there is a magical preset button that makes everything sound great - unfortunately there isn't and you will have to spend a lot of time playing with eq, effects settings and such to make your mix sound good - just like the rest of us mere mortals !