old-ish laptop

[geezy]

laptop about 5 years old, the cd drive has died in it, and now no longer shows up in windows at all, the bios doesnt detect either, so i can boot from cd to format the HDD.

any ideas how i can format and reinstall xp?

 

[PhillyDee]

Can you not boot from an external usb cd-rom? Apart from that, i dont see any other option apart from replacing the drive.

 

[geezy]

Can you not boot from an external usb cd-rom? Apart from that, i dont see any other option apart from replacing the drive.

dont have one to hand. i have one that connects using a PCMCIA card, its a JVC CD-MX1E but there are NO drivers available for it anywhere!

could i not hook the laptop up to my network via the router, and image the drive somehow from there?