P5KPL-VM I-G31 won't boot from XP installation CD

I didn't know where to post this, but since the main issue here is the BIOS of this motherboard, I figured here. I read all over the internet where people would get their BIOS to boot from the XP installation CD, but mine does not have any sort of option to do so, I removed the HDD from the priority menu, and then some sort of Intel Boot..something, came up, tried to run a test, failed, said check cables, and then the typical message saying to put a bootable image in the boot drive came up, and I hit a key, except then it did the Intel Boot test again, and then back to the message, creating an endless loop. I need to access the recovery console or whatever it is because I have corrupt files, and it's preventing me from using system restore/defragmenting completely. Chkdsk works great, but on restart when Autochk comes up (the important fixing one, naturally) it says my drive is RAW and it doesn't do RAWs, yet nothing else says it's a RAW (it's NTFS). Been searching on the internet for hours and hours and have come to no conclusion, nothing has worked. At one point I deleted I386 in C:\, not knowing how important it was, but I replaced it with a seemingly backed up one from a random folder, but then I figured since my XP Pro SP2 has not been updated since installation, I could just put the CD's i386 in. Another weird thing is that my ping is 999+ almost all the time, I thought it was bandwidth or something but it started happening right when all this did, and it's fine for 5 minutes after starting up, so I'm beginning to think this is all related. I installed the recovery console off the CD, and restarted/hit recovery console instead of XP pro, and it was simply a black screen with the flashing underscore, nothing happened. Some $@!^ site said to get rid of all the system restores to fix the restore issue, but that didn't work, so now even if I got rid of the corrupt files there'd be no way to undo whatever happened. Based on the sheer number of problems, I have no idea what information about my system to give, or where to begin fixing -anything-. Any ideas?

Too late to make backups? I have a 750 gig external, so I take it I should copy everything important before doing a repair install, even though it shouldn't get rid of the files?

I can't go to microsoft support or many microsoft things, like I said, internet's absolutely messed up, a lot of things are replaced with ads (like if I search something on yahoo, if I click it directly I get a site about foot washing tools instead of chkdsk issues). But I'll be copying every single thing i have into a massive backup, should I do the registry too? Or is that majorly pushing it, not too keen about reinstalling just about everything, but I was wondering if you could just re-install windows, put all the files back, and the registry back, and it be like it was before, or if there's some unique things it adds to the registry/files.

Christ. Did one bad shutdown cause all this? How could all this happen? I'll be backing up everything in the external regardless, still has 600 gigs left, then I'll be deciding if I want to repair it or absolutely nuke it, since my computer is so insane it installed XP pro in about 5 minutes, it shouldn't affect much, I think I'll do that just for the safe side. If I lose anything I'll flip out, but it's better than losing everything, right?

Edit: Changed boot priority, BIOS still won't let me boot from XP pro install CD, Intel Boot Agent comes up, fails, then tells me to insert the proper boot media in the specified boot drive, or something. The setup can run when windows has booted and logged in, and I can upgrade XP pro from there, but I don't know if it's the same thing or not. Might be an issue with the CD, but sadly it seems that I can't even get into the boot setup so I can't upgrade.

Edit2: Can't format the drive since I can't install windows on my external (Even normal windows install won't work, just a black screen with a blinking underscore)