Tried to respond to this yesterday before I left but the PC died. :(

At this point it is sounding to me that either you have some corrupted driver files or Windows has lost its' marbles.

To address the bad drivers problem, you need to locate the .INF file for each device (good luck as it invloves some guesswork), and rename it to something else. Then remove each suspect device that you have renamed the .INF file for and then restart. Windows should refind everything and because it lacks a .INF file it will prompt you for the files. Now you can put in a floppy, CD, or specify a directory (in the case of ACPI for example you want to use the new drivers you downloaded from IBM) and it will actually overwrite the old files (rather then just setting it up the same way it was before).

If Windows is suspect, you can try the following (although I would probably backup the data and then reinstall Windows from scratch): Remove PNP BIOS from system devices in the device manager. This will cause Windows to automatically redect and reconfigure all PNP devices. Please note: DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK. This is something a friend told me that he does when switching hard drives to new PCs with differnet hardware. He said it works great but I have not tried it myself and would not without a full backup first.