No battery to remove.... no need to either. Most Acer Aspire laptop use the F2 key to get into the BIOS (what you are calling the CMOS). One of the options is to reset the BIOS to factory defaults, which you said has already been done. If not sure then use the F2 key and set the factory default.
Now the Windows problem is a Windows problem not a Linux problem, you may get a better answer at some Windows forum, which I do suggest you do. But to help you out (hopefully), boot the laptop into the Windows safe mode by pressing the F8 key when Windows first starts to load (the blavk Windows screen).
You might want to re-flash your BIOS also, here's a link to get the latest for your laptop;
http://www.acer.com/us