[general_re]

It is wise to avoid mistakes - PM is an excellent suggestion, as it's reliable and relatively foolproof for such a powerful tool. PM lets you create a boot disk as I recall, that you can use to boot into a machine that is otherwise unbootable, and perform your repartitioning that way...

[stylin_geek]

This site contains excellent instructions on bringing your harddrive back to scratch. Unfortunately, the /mbr does not always work.

As for your system not being able to boot to the CDROM, you need to set the boot device sequence in the BIOS. Good luck, I do not envy you at all.