MacBook Pro :: Cannot Even Startup Past Grey Screen

I sure hope your day is faring better than mine...To try and make my new issue easier to follow and to save face as I feel like an idiot, permit me to explain in bullet format:

First things first: I was running 10.6.8 SL on my 2006/7 model MacBook pro 15.4 w 2 gig sdram, right now I'm running nothing. When I turn on Mac it goes to grey screen and I see a folder/?/apple symbols rapidly interchanging on screen. This occurred after trying to use TM for my first time as I deleted some items I shouldn't have. In time machine all seemed kosher until the first attempt said not enough space on hd so I decided to only click on sys folder in TM. this was where prefs and files were accidentally deleted from after all. The kicker is my Mac still functioned I just noticed my HD no longer had a name, and a few other issues were happening, but I could access and open files, go online, etc... Post time machine none of that was possible! I tried first putting SL disk in but wouldn't read it, so tried restarting w disk in drive. HUGE ERROR on my part. This is where the grey screen desc above took its place. I looked on iPhone and have followed all available suggestions but have come to realize at some point I must have in error created a firmware Pw. I tried entering it but the lock simply stays put (when I attempted one of many fixes to my problem listed online). So now I'm left not knowing if whatever happened messed w my firmware pw or if I somehow chose something diff as pw but I highly doubt that. In any case, I have all of my life locked into a useless box now and I had thought this is why I bought external and used time machine. I've come to loathe TM. it's not as simple as I had thought otherwise none of this dshould have occurred. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I reset or altogether delete firmware pw, and best way to reinstall.

Info:MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM