I TRIED TO RE-INSTALL THE OS WHEN THE DVD/CDRW DRIVE STOPPED WORKING IT STOPPED AFTER IT FORMATTED THE HARD DRIVE. NOW MY QUESTION IS HOW CAN I USE AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TO INSTALL THE OS. THEN PROCEED TO REPAIR THE DVD DRIVE? ALSO IF I NEED TO REPLACE THE DVD DRIVE WILL I BE ABLE TO JUST PLUG IT BACK UP AND WILL IT WORK WITH OUT LOADING THE DRIVERS ?

do you have dual hard disk? check if your hard disk where OS installed is the boot drive/primary drive. press f2 during boot sequence then choose the proper hard disk

You need to format your hard disk. Please note that formatting will erase all you data from the hard disk and all the software including the Operating system.

If you have your OS master CD you can insert it in the cd/dvd drive and restart the laptop. This will detect the OS CD and try to install it. In the installation process there is an option "Format your hard drive". You should select that option. Then it will format, mark the bad sectors, create a new boot sector and install the OS. You will be just fine.

Hi
You need to make the proper format, in order not to see this message.
Tell us please which OS you intend to install, what tool you used to format?

If your hard drive is 250 GB or less, you can format it using OnTrack Disk Manager,
For any hard disk capacity, you can use Windows CD to format.

Please tell us your results
Good Luck

Did you drag the video and audio files.

There is no reason to format a dvd-rw, if you want to use it again
just delete the files on the disk, if you format it, you could cause it to stop working or not accept files.

You format a hard drive to change format, or install a OS.

You don't use format on CD or DVD's just to erace them.

Nero also has an erase option.

1st Option: Go to BIOS level and select the CD/DVD device is the first device for boot option and then insert the recovery CD/DVD to format or install OS.
2nd Option: If recovery CD/DVD got curropted and you are having the other OS CD/DVD, then try to load and format or install the OS. Also try to download the recovery image from vendor website.

Revert back for more assistance.

Assuming you don't mean the BIOS...
It suffices usually to reinstall Windows or whichever OS you intend to use. You let the installation program format the partition (watchout you loose all data which was on that partition)

If you do have some backup on your file, you need to have other Hard Disk Drive to copy all of the files inside.

You can hook two computers together using a crossover cable. They may have them at radio shack, if not you can find one on the web for cheap. Then you can put the install in one cd and have it install in the other computer.

try uninstalli/reinstall driver

as soon as a dvd writer drive only starts to play cd's, cdrw's or only reports that you have a CDRW drive when inserting a blank DVD, the writers laser is worn out or faulty and no longer recognises dvd's, and so needs replacing i'm afraid, but as you may know not all dvd drives are hot swapable and need to be replaced by a repairer.