Original Problem Posted by: Steve on 02/06/2006 I have a 2 year old Sony Vaio laptop running windows XP that is in severe need of reformatting. Normally I would do this by tossing in the windows CD and rebooting, but my DVD-ROM stopped working about a year ago. Since Sony wanted upwards of $500 for a new one, I opted to buy an USB external DVD-ROM. I thought I would be able to use the new DVD-ROM to reformat and reinstall windows, but apparently the computer doesn't recognize the external device when booting. Does anyone have any idea how I might be able to reformat and reinstall windows? (note: I don't have a floppy drive either, but I do have my laptop on a LAN at home with my desktop computer). Votes: Rating: 0 Delete: 0