Booting from External CD

[Tinker]

My poor old laptop, held together by nothing more than chewing gum and string has taken a turn for the worse. The little switchery thingy that lets the comp know the draw is shut has made a leap for freedom and ejected itself with the last cd I removed so basically the internal CD/dvd player is beggered.

All is not lost as I have a functional external USB CD RW so I can install stuff if necessary but the question is...

If I need to format the hard drive, will my laptop recognise the external CD player when I need to re install windoze?

Presumably I would need to install drivers in dos for the USB port after formating and also for the external USB CD/RW, if so how do I go about doing that?

Please Help

Currently running Win ME/ using compaq presario (about 3 years old)

[ORAC]

Make a boot floppy with the approprate USB drivers. Then load the CD, go to the drive and type RUN xxx.

USB CD drivers

[RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike]

Exactly

Your PC will not be able to boot from the USB CD unless there is support for that in the BIOS. If there isn't you may be able to upgrade the BIOS to support it, but given the alleged age of your lapttop, I doubt it

[Tinker]

Cheers