[sparky]

Originally Posted by heyjupiter678

Sparky, I asked my boyfriend about it because he's a computer technician, and he typed this up:

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My suggestion is to replace the internal CD-Rom drive (very easy to do) and use the restore disks. Any replacement internal CD-Rom drive will work regardless of whether you're running Windows or not. The BIOS on the motherboard has "drivers" already installed on the chip so you can use a CD-Rom, CD-Rw, or DVD-Rom drive, as long as your computer can boot from it. And seeing as how you have Windows XP, I take it it's less than 5 years old, so it will boot from the CD.
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He also says that an external CD-Rom drive could work if the computer is less than 2 yrs. old and it's able to boot from a removable device. But if you're not sure about that, replacing the internal drive should do the trick.

Hope that helps!

Thanks !