I am feeling very stupid. I cannot boot from CD, I cannot boot from USB and I have no OS installed on the laptop.
Backstory: This computer is old. I couldn't boot from usb or cd, but wanted to install a new OS. I modified my xp boot using plopboot in order to boot from usb and install arch Linux, i've installed it a million times. The partitioning failed and I could not delete the partitions without rebooting since they were still responding to the kernel. When I rebooted I could not access the archiso anymore.
Condition:
-Mobo has No UEFI
-when trying to boot to cd it says: "reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key" (live cd's I tried are verified working with a 64bit UEFI computer)
-it is a laptop
what i have at my disposal :
intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 002)
a floppy drive
an ATAPI CDROM drive & 3 usb ports
a restrictive american megatrends v2.54 bios setup utility
things I have tried
-adjusting boot order / booting from cd (gives aforementioned error) and usb
-changing the IDE of the primary slave to cd-rom
-at least 3 live cds in desperation
Really at this point any sort of help you can give me would be appreciated. This turned from a hopeful opportunity to a resource intensive pit very very fast.
Please forgive the formatting. Was not aware I had to make breaks ..;