[pb315]

Toshiba Satellite Pro
Model L300-EZ1004X
Windows XP SP3

OK, this is my Dad's laptop I'm trying to fix. He got some sort of virus/malware awhile back. I did what I could to clean out the system with AVG, but I believe there's probably still something on the computer.

On top of this, the laptop cannot connect to the wireless router at home, which was a Belkin G and was replaced today with a Netgear N. There is some program on here called ConfigFree that seems to want to handle the Wireless, but fails miserably since this problem start, as it cannot repair the wireless connection. It can connect to the wireless network at work, which is Verizon FiOS with a combination modem/wireless router, but other than that it can't even detect wireless networks.

And just to make all this worse, the optical drive, which is a DVD/CD drive, will not show up under my computer, or even in the device manager. When I put discs in, I can hear them spinning, the light on the drive blinks, and it sounds like its trying to load, but nothing happens on the computer. I plugged in my external DVD burner, and that is running without a hitch.

So I used the external burner to create the recovery DVDs, but I cannot get the computer to boot the discs, either in the internal or external optical drives. I've tried rearranging the boot menu in the BIOS to go to CD/DVD first, then USB, then HDD, but nothing works.

I can't figure out how to phyiscally remove the internal optical drive. I'm at a loss here. I want to clean install XP so I can create a recovery partition, but I can't even get the recovery discs to boot. Can anyone help?