laptop without optical drive

hello,



i have a laptop without an optical drive, it crashed and i need to install XP back onto it, any ideas?

Usually an external USB drive will work just fine. Though I know I was working on a laptop once and the laptop wouldn't boot to their external DVD burner. However, it booted to mine just fine. His drive was just fine in Windows, but for some reason it wouldn't detect it in the bios...

either usb or new laptop, if the usb doesnt work might have to pay somebody to put it back on for you