Originally posted by Shotgun:
Btw, I feel reformatting my friend's 2nd hand laptop, cos I don't believe the previous owner ( a relative ) did a thorough job. However, the laptop doesn't have a built in CD rom drive. So I figured I'd need a USB one.
I' haven't done this b4, so I'm not sure if after reformatting, I would be able to use the external USB CD rom. If i can't then I can't install the OS also. Would I need some special drivers to boot from the external CD rom drive?
That laptop must be old to have no CD-ROM drive.
If there's no CD drive, it's not easy to install an OS. If I'm not mistaken, old motherboards don't support booting up via USB devices.
After formatting and installing Windows, you should have no problems using the USB CD-ROM drive, as long as the drivers are installed. You will definitely require special drivers. Most manufacturers will give you a 3.5 floppy disk to insert it and install before the installation of Windows begins.