All those suggestions are good but in this circumstance this is what I do. You can put something called SmartBootManager on a floppy and when you boot it, it will then allow you to boot from any device. It can be a little tricky, sometimes you have to try a couple of times, but it almost always gets the job done. Just Google for:
smartbootmanager +download
A huge thank you and kudos to you, tyger--the "SmartBootManager" turned out to be a perfect solution. Absolutely no problems booting from CD-ROM now.
I'm so glad I don't have to mess with the BIOS on that old motherboard any more!
In case someone else stumbles on this thread in the future, I'll save you some time by giving you the exact steps I used to boot from my CD-ROM with Smartbootmanager:
1. Download SmartBootManager 3.7.1 from:
http://btmgr.sourcef...3.7/sbminst.exe2. Open a terminal window (Start > Run... > cmd), navigate to the folder where you saved "sbminst.exe" in, insert a blank floppy in your A drive, and type "sbminst -t us -d 0", hit return, and voila! you now have a floppy with the SmartBootManager installed on it. ("-t us" option installs the smartbootmanager in english, and "-d 0" installs it onto the first drive, or the floppy A drive).
3. Make sure your BIOS is set to boot from a floppy; when booting from the floppy you created it will give you the option to boot from the CD-ROM (if it is detected).
4. If you can't even boot from a floppy, it is possible to install SmartBootManager on your C drive with: "sbminst -t us -d 128 -b backup_mbr" where the "-b backup_mbr" option will make a backup of your current MBR (saved as "backup_mbr") before overwriting your master boot record (MBR) with SmartBootManager.
Also, many thanks to everyone else who offered their ideas for troubleshooting my problem.