Laptop CDRom Died, External Burn question (help)

[ThePunkGeek]

My friends laptop cd rom died, and we didn't know this, so we formated windows, and were about to install winxp, to find out the cdrom was toast. We're wondering if an external burner would allow us to install windows? i know some of the older ones wouldn't because they needed the drivers installed to do so. Thanks.

[Captain Slug]

You'll need to check in the BIOS as to whether or not a USB drive can be set before the hard drive in the boot order. If yes then it should be a piece of cake. Otherwise it's a gamble.

If you need a replacement (and it's not a terribly old machine) I have some spare laptop CD-ROMs.