I'm sorry craftyc, but you are wrong; it's me that's an idiot....
I should have read more carefully, now I see you have no way to boot except from the harddrive.
So, go for the second method. Tear out the harddrive according to the manufacturer's instructions. If no such are found: Turn the laptop upside down. Find the screws and remove them. Then turn it right again and see what parts that fall off. Or find some other way - all laptops I have seen provide a way to fling them open.
Careful here, you need to find out how the hdd is formatted (see previous post). You also need an adapter to connect the tiny hdd to the ordinary IDE-controller. If you think all this sounds very hard I think you should ask some experienced friend for help. On the other hand this is a method that I have used and thus know to work.
There might be other ways but this is how I should have done it.
Are you *sure* this laptop comes without any possible way for the owner to recover it into "start"-status? It seems pretty new (considering it has an USB-port and a DVD-player) and it might be possible to get some service where you bought it. What brand and model is this?