blank screen when attempting to start 2K after update from 98se

I have read the post concerning reformat of hard drive but still have questions. I'll try to keep it short.
I started out with a clean boot of 98se, it was working just fine. After using things for a couple weeks I did the upgrade to 2K pro. I had some initial problems with the mouse and keyboard not wanting to work but after doing an add hardware that worked fine. Everything seemed to be going well till I attempted to go online to do updates.... I recieved a message which basically said I didn't even have a modem... I do, and it was working fine prior to the upgrade.
I did the driver install but apparently it says a modem doesn't even exist on my machine.
I rebooted the machine after the driver instal and was greeted with a blank screen with a cursor (NOT a DOS prompt).
Realizing I was in serious doodoo, I figured the best bed was just to do a cleanboot and get 98se back...start over. I did manage to reboot using the 98 bootdisk and can get to the dos prompt but it won't let me reformat from the start up disk, it says I don't have any FAT32 files and I don't have enough space to set up a partition (I have plenty of hard drive space but not when you come from the bootdisk apparently). Yes, you guessed it, I converted to NTFS
So my questions are this:
1. can I make a bootdisk from the update cd?
2. if I can't make a 2k bootdisk or if I do make the boot disk and it doesn't help, is there a way for me to reformat the harddrive to be able to reinstall 98se? (ie, how do I get the FAT32 files back)
3. could you please explain the partitioning thing to me in simple terms, or refer me to information.
and lastly
4. would it be simpler to purchase partitioning software or is this problem beyond that point.

I'll look forward to any help you can give. Thanks in advance.

 

I believe you can boot from the installation CD (you certainly can from the full product, and I am fairly sure you can from the upgrade CD). You need to go into the BIOS screens (usually by hitting Del, F1 or F2 on boot - there is usually a message on the first screens along the lines of "hit Del to enter setup ".), and change the boot sequence so that the CD-ROM is before the hard disk.

I'd start with that as it will be the simplest way to reinstall Win2000.