removed PCI device, lost ACPI, can't from CD-ROM, am I screwed?

[texx]

GA-7n400 Pro2 (rev2.x) motherboard. Latest firmware. 2 Hard drives, 2 CD drives.
Multiboot system which has Grub menu Xubuntu and a second level of windows boot menu (with Win2000, winXP) as one of the Grub entries.

Recently i removed a PCI card which I never use (Pixelview TV capture card piece of junk). Straight afterwards Windows 2000 and WinXP wont boot, both give a BSOD with "non acpi compatible system, reinstall with F7 options".

Basically it means I don't have ACPI anymore. I have a win98 install on here too, which I access via boot floppy, it also does not load. My Xubuntu OS does load fine, but looks like it is not using ACPI either.

Fine I thought, time to use some rescue CDs... but I find I can not boot from CDs at all, no matter what BIOS settings I use.

I've switched back to original BIOS version, cleared CMOS a lot, juggled all the settings I can find. Nothing seems to make any difference to the underlying ACPI issue.

I've also noticed that when i save BIOS settings to CMOS, the system does not restart. I have to manually reset. The settings ARE saved, but probably something is not being initialised properly.

Maybe the PCI pool is not being reset.
Maybe I broke a chip on the mobo.
Maybe there is some corruption somewhere that I can't reset.

I can reinstall linux or windows since i can't boot from a CD. I don't have 4 floppies around to do a NT boot set either :-/

I dunno. Is there a tool to mess with ACPI? Reset DMI tool? Reset PCI tool?
Is there a way to boot a bootable CD-Rom from a Floppy? (most I have found so far are very hard to use)

[AmmoLin]

Does the ESCD information in the BIOS change anything?

I think with debian you can create a boot image on a floppy then install over the network? I'm not really au fait with Linux much...

How many OS's have you actually got installed, and would that be making it more complicated??

[texx]

No ESCD in my BIOS.
I used Smart Boot Manager to make a floppy boot disc which allowed boot from CD via the floppy.
I still don't have ACPI or CD booting, but with the Boot Floppy I can operate as per normal.