[unicorn]

Two different ways comes to my mind; one elegant and one with more work involved.

Is it possible for you connect the laptop to a LAN? Then *if* you have dos-drivers for the laptop NIC you can connect it to the LAN and to another machine where you have the win-cd copied (or from the cd directly of course). Then copy the files from the other machine to the laptop and install from there.

No LAN, or no drivers (see above)? I have once opened a laptop and removed the hdd. Then I connected it directly to the IDE-interface at the mainboard at another machine. Formatted and copied the os.
This method also applies when changing hdd in a laptop, from a small sized to a decent one...
Warning: Pay some attention to how the harddrive is formatted in the laptop. If it's formatted in the laptop (using the laptop BIOS) it isn't to take for granted that the BIOS of the other machine automatically identifies the drive as formatted. In this case adjust the settings at the other machine's BIOS accordingly.

I hope all this makes some sense to you. What do you mean you can't login to the system? And is there nothing in the manual about restoring the system, or about how to boot from the DVD?