That being said, about a month after the DVD drive went dead I went to turn the laptop one day and got this error. "windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: windows\system32\config\system"
At first when I accessed the BIOS it wouldn't even detect the HD anymore. Yesterday I went to try again and it's listed there again, but that's about it.
I have the Toshiba recovery DVD, but like I said, the DVD drive is dead. This laptop doesn't have a floppy drive (of course) and it doesn't recognize USB as a bootable option. I now have a second laptop, so I guess my option is to do a network boot, but my new laptop has Vista on it, I don't really know how to do it and if it will work at all. I was thinking of buying the DVD drive and replace the old one, however with no OS working on the laptop I don't know if that will work (will I need to install any drivers at all? even if I get the exact same DVD drive model?)
Please help with this, if it's a problem that requires two posts (due to one problem being with the OS and the other being a hardware issue) my apologies and please tell me so so I can make the other post as well. I'm technically inclined and will follow instructions as given. Thank you in advance