If your hard drive is an IDE hard drive do the following.

1) Take your desktop machine. Get an IDE standard to Ide micro converter. (Most PC Supply stores have them).
2) Put it in as a secondary hard drive on your desktop

3) Format it.

4) Copy the I386 folder from the CD to the hard drive.

5) Power down the desktop and remove your master hard drive. Put your laptop hard drive in as a primary.

6) Boot up and load XP pro until it comes to the point of restarting system in 15 seconds.

7) At this point power off the PC and remove the laptop hard drive. Put it back into the laptop.

8) Boot the laptop off the hard drive. When it ask for the XP disk direct it to the C:\I386 folder and it will complete the installation.

It takes a little longer this way but keeps you from having to find a good CD ROM if that is the problem.

All In One Communications
Mustang, OK